Cooking a Filipino feast

MANILA, Philippines - For Purple Yam’s Amy Besa, “Christmas is a summary of all your favorite foods from different aspects of your culture” – a fitting summary, indeed, for the end of the year.

“You have your native kakanin and fruits; Spanish influenced dishes like lechon, ensaymada, tsokolate, relleno, hamon, turones, sans rival and other rich desserts; lavish Chinese pancit; and cakes and pies, which are an American influence,” she lists.

Some of Besa’s best memories are as a child in Tarlac, spending the holidays with her close-knit family.

“We had really good noche buena.” She recalls eating bibingka and puto bumbong right outside the church after attending dawn mass. She does not remember all of the exact details, she says, but she remembers many festive dishes that would grace the holiday feast. “It was a two- or three-day affair,” she says.

“Now the holiday season for us is work,” Besa says. For years, she has been welcoming guests to her restaurants for a traditional noche buena and Christmas brunch. “Our work is our social life now,” she says.

At Purple Yam Brooklyn (which opened in 2009), she and her family have been spending the holidays in the US for many years.

“When we had Cendrillon (opened in Manhattan from 1995 to 2008), Christmas and New Year was a special time,” she says. “We were packed for noche buena. Same as in the Philippines, we had ham, queso de bola.” They were able to create a very good version of bibingka and suman in the US, but Besa says, “Puto bumbong? Forget it!” At the same time, she laments the fact that even in the Philippines, especially in Manila, we seldom are able to taste authentic puto bumbong.

“I miss bibingka, puto bumbong, suman sa lihiya…” says Besa of what she craves for when she is in the US.

“What I miss most is fresh coconut, freshly grated coconut. We have the best coconuts in the world,” she adds.

In Purple Yam Malate, which Besa and husband chef Romy Dorotan opened earlier this year, the menu takes advantage of fresh local ingredients. “We use coconut in different stages… I’m really excited that I can use fresh coconut and exotic fruits here,” says Besa.

So far, the year has been successful for Besa’s latest venture, which is housed in her ancestral home on Nakpil Street in Malate. “Purple Yam Malate is really not a branch of Purple Yam Brooklyn,” she clarifies. “It is part of the vision and the concept, but I told my staff, don’t look at it as a branch. It is its own restaurant. It has its own integrity and its own vision, of course hewing closely to our values, which is real, fresh, natural food that comes from our environment.”

Besa makes sure that the money spent for ingredients goes back to farmers and small producers, a similar concept which they apply to their US restaurant. “We go to farmers’ markets, support the heritage foods movement and responsible farmers and ranchers that handle the food with integrity. My advocacy is producing good food.”

A major turning point in the way Besa viewed food is when she was traveling around Massachusetts in the 80s, passing by farms where farmers would leave boxes of produce roadside for passersby to sample and purchase.

“That’s when I really understood terroir,” says Besa. “I remember for the first time, biting in one of those green beans. I’ll never forget that… my brain exploded. It was my first time to eat farm fresh beans and I said, ‘oh my god.’ It tasted of the earth, what a green vegetable actually tastes like.”

From then on, Besa says she was never the same again. “It was so fresh, so alive in your mouth. So many flavors in one bite… wow, that’s what food is!”

She goes on, “Food is dynamic and organic… It should be nourishing and nurturing. That’s what food is about. It’s to feed people, to give people a healthy life.”

This same food philosophy is what Besa hopes to impart to her staff in Purple Yam Malate.

Besa credits luck and serendipity for putting her staff together, most of whom she met through her connections in Enderun and from her interaction with students at De La Salle College of St. Benilde. “The only criterion is that they have to be passionate about Filipino food.”

At Purple Yam, Besa’s group of young and enthusiastic chefs have the opportunity to discover and work with the various ingredients found in the Philippines. Part of Besa’s advocacy in upholding the legacy of Filipino food is to develop a kitchen staff that would be familiar with working with ingredients from the country.

“A recipe is just a recipe. But what you do has to come from you. It’s your interaction with the food and ingredients that is important,” Besa tells her staff. The restaurant menu is a collaboration among all of them.

Asked to conceptualize an ideal holiday meal, Purple Yam Malate came up with three courses that make up a festive spread.

The appetizer is a caramelized chicken that is smoky with a hint of burnt sugar, with crisp skin and tender meat. “It was a recipe I learned from a Chinese Filipino in the States in the 70s,” says Besa, who draws from memory and experience to come up with creative dishes. The chicken is served Korean ssam style, with lettuce and pickled vegetables.

For the main course, Besa and her chefs decided to go traditional with lechon – a Pinoy feast would not be complete without it. The Purple Yam version, made by sous chef Rap Cristobal, is a roasted lechon belly paired with a salad of native greens, pomelo, radishes and green mango, with a tangy dressing made of Abra honey and dayap (lime). It is also served with organic, heirloom rice, different varieties of which are offered on Purple Yam Malate’s regular menu.

Dessert is Dorotan’s take on halo-halo. The PYM special iced dessert does away with plain, boring shaved ice. Instead, it is a combination of watermelon ice, organic Benguet passion fruit sorbet, buko sherbet with carabao milk, nata, kaong and crispy pinipig, all topped with avocado and mangosteen ice cream.

Over the sumptuous meal, Besa looks forward to the coming year. She will continue to work on Purple Yam’s retail booth in SM Aura. “My dream is to have a bakery café, or an ice cream soda fountain.” She also hopes to branch out and make Purple Yam more accessible to the many more who hope to have a taste of creative dishes that use the freshest produce the Filipino farmers have to offer.

Most of all, Besa looks forward to discovering a lot more about the Philippines and what ingredients and tastes it has to offer. “We haven’t even scratched the surface yet,” she says. “We have so much. I support Filipino food because I think it’s the most delicious food on earth. I’m not just saying that… I know it.”

Purple Yam Malate is located at 603 Nakpil corner Bocobo streets, Malate, Manila. Tel 523-3497.