Cooking with the quiet ambassador of Filipino cuisine

Behind a stack of wrinkly chayote, string beans and radishes, a vegetable vendor bags a set of gleaming eggplants and ties the handles together with an expert twist.

“Sariwa ‘yan. They’re fresh,” she says cheerfully as she hands the bag over to Isi Laureano, our guide and cooking teacher.

We are with her at the Alfonso wet market in Cavite City – 90 minutes southwest of Manila – to buy ingredients for the dishes that she will be teaching us to cook today, and we’ve already gotten a quick rundown of the produce piled up high at different stalls.

“I like to use local vegetables that are available at the market on the day that I cook,” she explains. Freshness is a crucial element of her heirloom recipes. “If you have the best ingredients, you’ll have the best outcome for your cooking.”

A host on Traveling Spoon, an online platform that helps travelers book cooking lessons with local chefs, Isi comes from a long line of restaurateurs and food entrepreneurs from Malabon – a city with so much culinary bounty that it’s a food tour destination for both locals and foreigners alike. Thanks to her efforts to spread the word about Filipino food and to support local farmers, she has been called the “quiet ambassador of Filipino cuisine”. Isi not only teaches Filipino cuisine at the De La Salle University’s College of Saint Benilde, she also runs a business called Eat Matters selling chili sauces and other condiments.

Thanks to her efforts to support local farmers, Isi has been called the quiet ambassador of Filipino cuisine

It takes around half an hour to choose among the vegetables, meat and seafood in the bustling covered market. Today, we’re cooking tortang talong (eggplant fritters) with chorizo, adobong manok sa gata (chicken adobo with coconut milk) and ginataang isda sa gulay (coconut milk-stewed fish and vegetables). Laureano directs us around a mound of watermelons to another stall where we pick up local kakanin (glutinous rice cakes) to add to the buko (coconut) pie and calamansi pie we’re having for dessert.

We unload all the ingredients back at Isi’s country home in Tagaytay, which overlooks Taal Lake and Taal Volcano. Isi also holds cooking classes in Manila, but even though Tagaytay is about an hour away from the crowded city, the bright sunlight filtering through the curtains, the sound of roosters crowing and the vibrant greenery outside makes it feel like an entire time zone away.

Like many houses in the Philippines, the Tagaytay house has two kitchens, and we’re cooking in the one that’s commonly called the “dirty” kitchen – not because of its condition but because it’s where the real, messy work happens. The cooking class is a hands-on experience; although attendees can choose to simply watch, the fun is in the participation. Isi begins cleaning and sorting our haul from the market: mackerel, chicken, okra, green beans, kangkong (water spinach) and tomatoes. We follow along, mimicking her movements and following her instructions on washing, chopping and grinding.

While we prep, Isi talks about her recipes, which have been passed down through the generations of her family. Isi remains mostly true to them, but she’s also added her own unique twist.

If you have the best ingredients, you’ll have the best outcome for your cooking

“I like to add more indigenous ingredients or else try to enhance the existing flavors. For example, the adobong manok sa gata – adobo is usually made with soy sauce and vinegar, but the addition of gata (coconut milk) adds an extra richness to the dish. I like gata a lot, so I tend to include it in a recipe when I can,” Isi says.

She also shares an array of different types of vinegar and patis (fish sauce) and offers us samples of each one, explaining how minute changes in the fermentation process can create wildly different flavor profiles.

Cooking with Isi is comfortable and homey, like being at a relative’s house helping to prepare Sunday dinner for the family. Even though the occasional accident happens, like okra cut the wrong way and a couple of crushed tomatoes, everyone just laughs it off.

As everything is bubbling away in pots and pans, we set the table, laying fragrant banana leaves over the tablecloth. It doesn’t take long after that before Isi declares that dinner is ready, and when all the dishes are assembled in the middle of the table, our chatter dies down for a moment as we admire all the food that we helped make.

Perhaps it’s the sense of accomplishment or perhaps it’s the convivial atmosphere but the food we cooked tastes incredible, and it’s all gone in half the time we spent making it. And yet there’s still room for the desserts – the mild sourness of the calamansi pie contrasting with the tender young coconut in the buko pie and the sweet stickiness of the kakanin.

When people say that food is an experience, it’s because it is an accessible means of participating in a culture. It’s certainly possible to visit Manila without experiencing the local culture through food or cooking, but why would you? The afternoon with Isi has been more than just a cooking lesson or a meal because we’ve spent time with each other – and that really does matter.

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