Memories are delicious

It was my first attempt to cook sinigang na baka for our family lunch last Sunday. The ingredients were almost complete. Except for Nanay.

In the kitchen, I did as what my mother would do: boil the beef for three hours in the pot, in atay-atay na apoy (slow fire). Cooking, my mother said, is a labor of love. It is in this labor that the flavor of the dish is enhanced. Any quick fix is a kitchen disaster — the meat would not be tender or the broth would be less tasty. It was Candida’s self-imposed rule that any shortcut to cooking was not allowed so any sinigang dish at home should have the fresh, not powdered, tamarind. So, there would only be sinigang on our dining table when tamarind was in season. (Or there would only be sinigang sa bayabas na bangus at home when guavas were aplenty in the neighborhood.)

The food at home has tasted differently since my mother’s passing last May. The kitchen was her domain, the altar where she would, so to speak, offer prayers to God to make the viands she cooked delicious. She would often say in the vernacular: “Cook with a happy heart.” And she would season her cooking with kundiman and harana songs. If not her own voice, she would play on her phone Ruben Tagalog’s Dungawin Mo Hirang or Jo Stafford’s No Other Love to accompany her in the kitchen.

Memories are delicious because in them are the joys of my mother as I watched her do her magic in the kitchen. Like, for instance, the first time she cooked kare-kare last year, she was overjoyed because she discovered that she could “invent” something new for her children. Yes, she forgot to put puso ng saging and peanut butter in her kare-kare but she was happy nevertheless that despite not having those ingredients in the pot, her children sincerely liked what she cooked. Mirth registered in her tone, the way elation would be written on someone’s face after hitting the Lotto jackpot.

Truth is, Candida was our family’s jackpot every time we dined at home, many times under the himbaba-o tree in our backyard. Her excellent cooking was always the reason her five children and her grandchildren would converge at home. Every meal we shared was peppered with love and laughter so that on many occasions we ended up dancing to O Maliwanag na Buwan of Pilita Corrales after our family dinner. One by one, her children would bring her to the dance floor — an ample open space in our yard — and she would just submit herself to our dancing. She would laugh as her hands swung loosely on our shoulders. She would shriek like a child when any of her children would make her turn slowly, her hand tightly clutching onto mine or my brothers’. Our collective joy, so thick one could slice it in the air, was our dessert.

Her physical presence will always be missed every time we dine at home — or every time we attempt to cook in her kitchen.

Last Sunday when I started to sauté the ingredients for my own version of sinigang na baka, I relied heavily on memories. How would my mother do it?

In the pan I first sauteed the garlic. It smelled good as it danced in cooking oil. I could almost hear my mother: “Mix the onions before the garlic turns golden brown.” When the sliced onions were already translucent, I threw the sliced ripe tomatoes in. The merry mix of sound from the pan was music to my ears. I copied my mother: I cooked with a happy heart as I sang Ang Tangi Kong Pag-ibig, Anak Dalita, and Bituing Marikit.

Captivating was the aroma emanating from the kitchen; so much so that I got excited all the more to cook. Thin smoke hovered above the pan; it danced before it vanished in the air. I took it as a sign that my mother was watching me create magic in the kitchen. There was excitement in me; the same anticipation my mother would have every time she held her magic wand in the kitchen. Memories flooded that moment. They were delicious memories of my mother, a kitchen virtuoso, as she commandeered her favorite spot in the house.

When the tomatoes were crushed finely and they gave out an orange tint in the pan, I scooped out the beef from the pot where I boiled it for three hours earlier and sauteed it, too. Ditto with cubed gabi. Candida always said that gabi needed more time to cook so it was always one of the first to go in the pan.

“Easy on the patis,” my mother would always say. So, I seasoned the dish with just the right amount of fish sauce. When it simmered, I added the broth and the tamarind. On its first boil, I scooped out the tamarind and mashed them in a bowl to get the juice. Using a strainer, I mixed the tamarind juice in the dish and added half a pitcher of hugas bigas.

While waiting for the dish to boil again, I performed more songs in the kitchen. My thought balloon was a prayer, too, that my version of the dish would taste as delicious and divine as my mother’s sinigang na baka.

There were no okra and eggplant but I had puso ng saging, which I sliced into four before putting it in the broth when it started to boil again. Then the sliced radish. The minute I mixed the radish into the symphony in the pan was the moment I knew I made a mistake. My mother always said that the radish, like the gabi, took a longer time to cook. I summoned my mother’s wit to help me correct my mistake but it was already late. I imagined my mother’s wide smile with my kitchen blunder. And I could hear her say: “Lalambot na rin ‘yan sa t’yan (It will get cooked in the stomach).” I just smiled.

The green leaves of kangkong were the last to join the pan. I turned off the stove, covered the pot, and waited for five more minutes before I served lunch last Sunday.

Kuya Ronnie, the eldest in the brood, said it was good, sour enough to soothe the nasal cavity, but it lacked “linam.”

Linam is that yellowish circle of oil in the soupy dish. It makes sinigang na baka more delicious. To create linam, my mother mashed some of the tender fatty parts of the meat against the ladle as it was being sautéed. No shortcut, I heard her say.

I know better now how to create my mother’s sinigang na baka next time. *