With all of the American high school drama and college rivalries that we saw on TV which left something to be desired in real life for us Canadians (but that I no longer crave for particular reasons), there were some moments of tension between some local schools when I was a kid. There might’ve been the school labeled as the “artsy” one, or there might’ve been that one school who thought they were hot shit because they had that one famous actor who was in that one show for a hot second. Compared to a lot of my friends’ parents, my mom and dad immigrated to Canada a little earlier in their lives, so they ended up attending high school in Vancouver and became familiar with its networks and stereotypes. That also meant they spoke with less of a homeland inflection, but they were still fluent in their respective Filipino languages. They spoke them at home with each other, and with other Filipino friends and family, but like many of my Filipino friends who were children of immigrants, we were never taught the languages in order to blend in with the English-speaking crowd.
I’ve always been interested in languages, but apparently that sets off a very soft alarm on the gaydar, albeit less of an obvious one, right next to “not being able to drive” and “ice coffee flowing through veins”. I’ve had moments of seriously studying French and Spanish, and then I’ve dabbled a little bit in Italian, Russian, and American Sign Language – I’ve also had my moments of eye-rolling geekery with Dothraki and Esperanto, but only recently have I had the time to properly iron Tagalog into my brain. It really is such a weird way to linguistically traverse your past: it’s obviously easy to pick up words or phrases like “no” (hindî), “Monday” (Lunes), or “thank you” (salamat), but there are moments where I have the hardest time remembering particular words, until a switch is flipped. Ibigáy is an example – it means “to give something to someone”, and the flash card program I use is a pinch away from taking the card away from me so that I can relearn it later – but while practicing speaking out loud, I say the present tense form of the verb, ibiníbigáy. For some reason, this immediately transports me to something a relative would say – and has said – because of the familiar sounds and rhythm. All of a sudden the word becomes so easy to remember, despite the fact that I only grew up passively hearing the language.
A previous high school French teacher of mine used to say that grammar sticks to you more easily than vocabulary, with the latter tending to leave you the quickest when you let a language fade. Verbs in Tagalog have a root, and depending on the word, you basically append a particular affix which changes emphasis or directionality. In the case of the root word bilí, for example, magbilí means “to sell”, bumilí means “to buy”, bilhín also means “to buy” but with a focus on the thing being bought, ibilí means “to buy something for someone”, makabilí means “to be able to buy”, and so on. It’s hard to explain, but somehow, just by speaking these out loud, I can feel these affixes allude to their particular meanings just from this ingrained aural memory.
And our older relatives say we never listened to them.
For what it’s worth, and for all that I’ve attempted to unlearn, recode, and reinterpret in the context of intergenerational trauma and the toxic parts of my culture, rhythm is an interesting thing that has never left – from limp wrists to verb forms.
The elders in my family used to say I inherited my mom’s appetite, and I never really understood what they meant until relatively recently: the northern Ilocos region of the Philippines – where they tend to speak Ilocano rather than Tagalog – is known for vegetables taking center stage rather than meat, which feels exactly in tune with my grazing patterns. My mom is from Ilocos Sur; pinakbet originates from Ilocos Norte. I guess my fiber cravings are dual – and before I can even make another bottoming joke, the almost rainbow-coloured dish alludes to several parts of myself, and pretty much does it for me.
As a vegetable lover, I’m often underwhelmed by a lot of vegetable dishes, but the components of pinakbet keep me excited: although variations exist, it’s essentially a simmered vegetable dish containing a base of tomato, garlic, and bagoong alamang (fermented shrimp paste), layered with kabocha, eggplant, bitter melon, Chinese long beans, and okra.
As previously mentioned, it’s a literal rainbow of colour, but also a spectrum of flavours and textures, despite the relatively simple method of preparation: we have the tangy tones of the softened tomato, the sweet softness of the kabocha, the subtle fleshiness of the eggplant, the earthy strike of the bitter melon, the vegetal crunch of the Chinese long beans, the slippery crunch of the okra, and of course, the ribbon of funkiness from the bagoong. The name of the dish derives from the Ilocano word pinakebbet which means “shrivelled”, alluding to its final form when cooked.
I briefly lift the lid and lean over the pot as it simmers. I’m almost reminded of that fermented earthy smell that surrounds you when you step behind the curtain at a brewery. I realize I cut the pieces of eggplant a little too thick, so I carefully remove them and chop them into slightly smaller pieces of fading purple.
From my initial experiments, four out of thirteen wines worked well when I isolated the funkiness: biologically-aged sherry, which had great initial synergy that eventually got overtaken by the paste; a high-acid mineral-driven white wine (in this case, Assyrtiko) whose brightness matched the saltiness; an archetypical Central Coast Chardonnay, whose mouth-filling bass notes gave room for the saltiness to rise above and sing; and the German Riesling, whose shiny off-dry flex was an obvious partner to the saltiness but ultimately whose fruit flavours clashed a little more compared to the previous three wines. With all of the other components of pinakbet in the mix, I decide to go with the sherry – it seems the most intriguing.
Valdespino “Deliciosa” Manzanilla Sherry (Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Jerez, Spain) Sep 2020. $22 USD.
Pale lemon hue. A wonderfully subtle but insistent base of lemon and green apple, which joins blanched almonds. It almost veers into creamy territory on the nose, but it becomes clear that it’s the yeastiness that comes into focus as the glass warms up slightly. A hint of sea spray completes the glass, and the crystalline quality of it all almost brings bubble-less Champagne to mind, in ways that some leesy Muscadets could only ever dream of.
Despite the simplicity of the preparation, part of me starts to worry that there are too many competing flavours and textures for the Manzanilla to deal with, but with the dish, the wine turns into a perfectly levelheaded and conversational host that interacts with everyone in a refreshing way: it dives above the bitterness, jives with some of that brightness, provides a riposte to the sweetness, and melds with the salinity. It fills in the blanks while refreshing everything else, providing a two-pronged extension of meatiness and refreshment. Long story, short: it works.
I often don’t like assigning sparkling wines to dishes to lazily write them off as all-purpose mouth-cleansers – especially in the context of a homey no-frills dish like pinakbet – but I can see a similarly oxidative style of bubbly working here, perhaps in the vein of Jacquesson or Drappier.
That being said, and on another note: although I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum when it comes to (most) wine pairings, something in me winces when the annual wine-and-candy Halloween infographics start flowing – as I’ll allude to next week, looking past wine as a beverage pairing is severely underrated. It’s not quite candy territory, but it’s definitely something on the sweeter side.