Well, we got close, folks. However, it looks like a trouble-free year with only minor cancellations and delays for Christmas travel in Europe won't be happening after all.
06.12.2023 - 23:14 / atlasobscura.com
THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE DECEMBER 2, 2023, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURA’S FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE .
A few weeks ago, I found myself ripping apart a roast pig with my bare hands. The porker in question was a lechon, the crisp-skinned suckling pig that happens to be the national dish of the Philippines. It sat atop a truly hedonistic spread of prawns, mussels, annatto-tinted chicken inasal, and a wild abundance of fruit, all arrayed on banana leaves.
“We’re making it look pretty here, but it doesn’t have to be pretty,” says Rob Mallari-D’Auria, one of the owners of Kalye, a Filipino restaurant on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Every Monday, the restaurant hosts one of these banana leaf-strewn bacchanals—also known as a boodle fight.
“When I was in law school [in Manila], I joined a fraternity and for any special gathering, we’d throw a boodle fight,” he says. “We didn’t even use banana leaves to cover the table. We were using whatever we could find, say, newspapers. Can you imagine the ink on our food?”
There aren’t a lot of rules in a boodle fight. According to Mallari-D’Auria, this particular feast should have “at least three proteins,” but this is very much a more-is-more situation. And while longganisa (sausage) and lumpia (Filipino-style egg rolls) may be traditional, members of the far-flung Filipino diaspora have often adapted the dishes to whatever was available.
“As long as you have the banana leaves and you have the rice, it’s everyone’s ballgame after that,” Mallari-D’Auria says. “I think Filipino food is very inventive. It basically uses what’s available in the surroundings.”
One part, however, is essential: a boodle fight is meant to be shared and it should be enjoyed sans cutlery. These endlessly versatile, celebratory meals have a long, proud, sometimes complicated history in their country of origin.
Long before the onset of Spanish colonial rule in the 1500s, kamayan feasts were popular affairs throughout the Philippine archipelago. In Tagalog, the word “kamayan” quite literally means “with hands” and the feast was meant to be enjoyed as such. Kubyertos (cutlery) were available, but largely reserved for stuffier affairs.
Following the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Philippine-American War, the United States of America seized control of the Philippines. While the Spanish took little issue with kamayan traditions, the American colonial state tried to impose Western dining conventions on the island nation—including forks and knives.
“The tradition of eating by hand, it’s been there forever, long before the Philippines had been colonized by these other nations,” Mallari-D’Auria says. “Eating by hand is as old as making our own food.”
Cultures from South
Well, we got close, folks. However, it looks like a trouble-free year with only minor cancellations and delays for Christmas travel in Europe won't be happening after all.
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