12 Philippine Showbiz Today
12 Philippine Showbiz Today
December 8 - 21 , 2015
Recipes from one generation to another : a cookbook in the works
By Crisanta Sampang
Angie Igonia , Coordinator of the Sampaguita Seniors of the Multicultural Helping House Society , has a brilliant idea , and she can ’ t wait to share it with the Filipino community . The Sampaguita Seniors are publishing a cookbook that will feature Filipino home-cooked food ; recipes with a history ; simple meals that have been passed down by families from one generation to the next back in the Philippines . The book , however , will also include a few new recipes that the seniors have acquired through their travels and by assimilation into their new community .
Angie Igonia poses with the 3 cooks prepping for their demo . ▲
◄ Milagros Perez explains the process of making a good Escabeche dish
The Filipino recipes in the book will be simple , but great tasting dishes that are slowly being endangered in Vancouver , despite the availability of their ingredients in various Asian food markets . The second generation ’ s tastes are changing , and encompassing more of what , for instance , Milagros Perez ’ grandkids call English food . This includes pizza , pasta , hamburgers , fries and fried chicken . No more stewed galunggong in vinegar and garlic for them . No more mashed salted eggs in chopped fresh ripe tomatoes . Worst of all , nobody among the little ones pay any more attention to Milagros ’ flagship dish - shredded green papaya pickled in a sweet and sour sauce , and garnished with strips of red pepper and carrots - which she calls escabeche .
Milagros Perez grew up in a farming village in Cavinti , Laguna , where most of the fruit and vegetables her family needed could be picked fresh from the farm or the backyard garden . Her cooking skills were honed at home , under the strict eye of her own mother . She wants to pass on her special escabeche recipe to the next generation , and now she has a chance to do just that .
Milagros and about twenty other members of the MHHS
Sampaguita Seniors have signed on to do cooking demos to share their heirloom recipes and to get their audience to have a taste of those . These recipes , the cooks ’ pictures and a little history of how these dishes became a part of the family culinary repertoire will be showcased in a cookbook called Recipes from One Generation to Another , scheduled for release in January of 2016 .
A second important part of the Sampaguita Seniors Cooking Project is a cooking competition to be held on Jan 21 st , 2016 . The contest is open to all seniors in the Lower Mainland . For more information , please call Angie Igonia at 604 879 3277 . She is available from Thursday to Saturday every week .
The cookbook project and the cooking competition are funded by the New Horizons for Seniors Programs of BC .•
Gloria Canita shows off her recipe Porbidang Kangkong