Whenever I eat pinangat na sapsap, I think about my paternal grandparents.
Every summer growing up, my grandparents on my dad’s side would load up a van with six grandchildren and six weeks’ worth of food and supplies. We would all go on an eight-hour road trip to spend the rest of the season in the province—playing, swimming, fighting, eating, and being children.
My Lola loves cooking for her family. On those carefree summer days in the province, we would awaken to the smell of champorado, silog, or pancakes. There was always a merienda of sopas or pancit or local kakanin, and we had unlimited fresh buko juice from all the buko trees around us. We ate a lot of seafood during lunch and dinner, thanks to our proximity to the sea and our friendly neighborhood fishermen. Inihaw na tilapia would be paired with diced tomatoes and onions, served with soy sauce and calamansi. I grew to love alimasag dipped in garlicky vinegar. Pinangat na sapsap was always in the usual rotation, probably because of how easy it was to cook and the abundance of sapsap in the area. I guess we all couldn’t pronounce the dish’s name then, because Lola would just call it “white sabaw”; I was already in college when I learned of its proper name. I loved white sabaw, it was so simple but also so satisfying. To me, it tasted like those simple but full days.
Pinangat na sapsap is among the family favorites of the many dishes my Lola cooks. Everything is delicious if I’m honest, but her mechado and puchero round out the top three for me. Her mechado is the stuff of legend: when our immediate family moved out of the family compound, along with the boxes and bags of personal items that made it to our new house was the mechado recipe that we now ate as cooked by my mom. When one of my cousins moved abroad, he spent his first few weeks video calling Lola to teach him how to cook it step-by-step. Today, in my own kitchen—in a city far from my Lola’s house—you’d find a piece of paper scribbled with her recipe tucked in the shelf of staple seasonings and fancy salts. I haven’t tried cooking it by myself, but it gives me a lot of comfort knowing it’s there—that I can access her mechado, that I can access my family.
Food has that magical ability to store cherished memories. In that famous scene from the film Ratatouille, food critic Anton Ego is transported back to a rough day in his childhood that was saved by the comfort of his mother’s cooking… all with one bite of the movie’s titular food. If food has this ability, it’s no wonder we cherish heirloom recipes.
When I would accompany my Lola in the kitchen as she cooked, I would hear phrases like “This was how my mom taught me to do it” and “I remember eating this when I was a kid”. It dawned on me that the same pinangat na sapsap, mechado, and puchero—dishes that hold so many memories of my childhood—held an entirely separate world of memories for Lola. Memories of growing up as seven children during the Japanese occupation (vastly different from my own experiences) yet are passed down through stories and food.
Lola also told stories of their ever-growing family convening every Sunday at my great grandparents’ house for a potluck-style lunch: my great grandfather grilling barbecue (“the best we’ve had!” my uncles would say), my Lola’s sister bringing dessert by way of the creamiest, silkiest leche flan (“the best we’ve had!” my sisters and I continue to say). Everyone eventually gained a signature dish, and these potluck parties continued and became an annual event of our now 80-person clan.
While I experienced the tail end of the potluck-style parties as a child, the sheer size of the family eventually led to our reunions being catered. Stories from the humble beginnings of the backyard potlucks still make rounds in the room, and occasionally—although it’s becoming rare—some of the signature dishes make an appearance. What’s amazing to me is that three, four generations down, we still all know our great-grandfather and—among other things—that he was fantastic at working the grill.
Some of the recipes have been passed down while some remain relics of fond memories of the past. Some have been updated and revised, and an entirely new set has emerged from the younger generations. We don’t know which recipes will make it farther down the family tree, or which will continue to evolve. But while the exact food may not always get passed down, it continues to be a medium for us to share, reminisce, and connect with our history.
Whenever I eat pinangat na sapsap, I think about my paternal grandparents. And I think about my childhood, and my Lola’s childhood, and all the many stories that make our family.
