Finding Comfort in Familiar Food

I have been married to my husband for over 30 years now. In all those years we have lived and worked in over 10 countries in South, East, and Southeast Asia, Central and East Africa, and North America. For part of that time, our children were with us and then after both had gone to college, it was only the two of us. Adjusting to a new country and a new culture is very challenging in many, many ways. But we, like millions of Filipinos before us, developed our own survival tactics. In our family, food is a very important part of family life. Finding comfort food in an unfamiliar environment can be challenging. But if you’re lucky, and if there are Filipinos in the country you find yourself in, you will benefit from the creativity and resourcefulness of those Filipinos who have been there before you, especially in terms of food.

In all the countries we’ve lived in, we’ve found recipes for Filipino food by Filipinos using local ingredients which although the same, has been subtly changed attesting to the universality of Filipino cuisine.

An example of this is the version of Laing, that spicy Bicol specialty.

Laing or Natong

Natong or Laing is native to Bicol. It is a spicy and creamy dish of taro or gabi leaves (which give the dish a rough feeling), pork or fish and chilis cooked in coconut milk. In Bicol they shape the cooked laing into squares and wrap them in net leaves which is found in the Taro tree.

The gabi leaves or taro are toxic in its raw form due to the presence of calcium oxalate. This toxin is destroyed by cooking or steeping the taro roots in cold water overnight. In Bicol, they dry the leaves thoroughly before cooking them.

Here is a recipe:
• 25 pieces gabi (taro) leaves, dried and shredded
• 1/2 kilo pork, diced
• 1/4 cup shrimp bagoong
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 red onions, chopped
• 2 tablespoons ginger, minced
• 5 jalapeno pepper, sliced
• 1 cup coconut cream (katang gata)
• 2 cups coconut milk (gata)
• 1/2 teaspoon monosodium glutamate (MSG)
• 2 tablespoons of oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
Cooking Instructions:
• In a casserole, sauté garlic, ginger and onions then add the pork.
• mix in the gabi leaves.
• Pour in the coconut milk (gata) and bring to a boil then simmer for 15 minutes.
• Add jalapeno, bagoong, salt and MSG and simmer for another 5 minutes.
• Add the coconut cream and continue to simmer until oil comes out of the cream.
• Serve hot with plain white rice.

Taro leaves or gabi are not available in Korea, so the Filipinos there use local Spinach leaves. They follow the recipe above, simply substituting the gabi with the spinach and using canned coconut milk. I have tried this spinach laing and it is very good! It is a bit smoother than the laing made from gabi leaves because of the spinach and some Filipinos in Korea say they actually prefer this version.

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