Remembering Mimi

I am lost in reverie of the thousand songs of summer. The wind through the trees, the crickets and their evening hymns, the tiny insects swarming about the lone orange bulb on the patio. Instantly I am taken back to the house of my childhood, the one where I moved from kid to teen to adult. The one where I lived through 2 Proms, 1 Ball , 2 graduations, 2 boyfriends, and about a million heartaches. I’m sorry but you’ll have to forgive me if I wax poetic with this entry. I’m sure most of you can relate as that usually happens when one remembers the blithe nature of one’s youth.

We moved quite a lot during the 80’s, 4 times if my memory serves me right, in the very same village. But it was that house in Banaba Street that I remember the most. Certainly it was no mansion. But the way I remember it, it went on and on. It was this typically 70’s designed house the façade of which was triangular and the windows were made of jalousies. I know nothing about architecture but that kind of window is a real pain. First, it wasn’t all that pretty and second, if for some reason you had to go in or out of the house (like a fire breaking in the hallway) without going through the front or back door, you’d have to take each jalousie out one by one or you’ll have a grand time trying to do a rock star move by throwing a chair to break the hell of all of them.

Anyway, in front there was a star apple tree that bore so much fruit that every summer we would offer them to neighbors and passers-by. We climbed that tree a couple of times sometimes to gather fruit and others to just to know how it felt up there, not that anyone of us went very high up since the branches also became thinner and therefore weaker as you went higher. One summer, the fruit suddenly went bad. Every ripe one we opened had these filthy, wriggly, white worms in it. Mimi, our nanny-slash-cook-slash-governess, who was with us since forever, said that someone made “lihi” the fruit of our tree and was the reason why there were worms in it. She also said that the worms were okay, and that eating them could actually make your voice sound really good. Now I don't know the validity nor reliability of that particular claim but what I'm sure of is that that was the story behind my not having a singing career. I didn’t have any star fruit that summer or the rest of the summers having developed a permanent aversion to it.

At the back of the house was a jackfruit and camias tree. The camias nobody seemed to care for. The fruit would just grow and dry up into clumps up on the tree every single time. But the jackfruit tree was like this great big mother always pregnant with fruit. She knew nothing about birth control, I tell you. The fruit were so big she looked like she was pregnant with octuplets all the time. They looked like sacks of rice, for crying out loud. During its season, the house would be filled with the heady perfume of jackfruit especially when Mimi had to turn them into preserves. The seeds were then boiled and eaten as they were reminiscent of chestnuts. Cheap chestnuts.

Now, Mimi was no cook when she first came to our employ. But by virtue of default, she had to take on the role of cook, mother, yaya, governess, what have you. But mostly, she did the cooking. Her repertoire consisted of the ubiquitous Adobo, Sinigang, Nilaga, Fried whatever and sautéed vegetables. She also made Pancit Bihon and Spaghetti Bolognese every time anyone celebrated his or her birthday. And she served them with rice! I kid you not, we actually grew up thinking that that was how it was eaten. I'd be over at a friend's house and they would be serving spaghetti and in my head I would be waiting for rice. I would be thinking, who the hell serves spaghetti without rice? I know, i know. All your Italian forefathers would be rolling in their graves but you would be amazed at how many people share this strange bacchanalian abnormality. If you try it though, you might find that it is strangely comforting as is anything carbohydrate laden. I have since stopped eating spaghetti with rice. The Pancit with rice, I still do now and then.

She also made some Vietnamese dishes she learned from our mother before she left. Those were my favorite amongst all she cooked and is to this day, some of my go-to dishes when I have no idea what to make for my kids. One of them was this Teriyaki- like dish only it had fish sauce (nuoc nam) instead of shoyu. It was sweet from the addition of sugar and spicy because of the insane amount of freshly cracked black pepper added into it which earned this dish the name “Maanghang”. As in--What’s for dinner? “Maanghang”.

She was a funny lady, old Mimi. She used to sing in an awful falcetto Lupang Hinirang to lull the little ones to sleep. Of course she didn't mean disrespect or anything like that, but that was truly the only song she knew (that and the Visayan song Matud Nila). Come to think of it, if you listened to the national anthem over and over again, even you would fall asleep. It was either that or she would be also listening to Gabi ng Lagim on the AM radio. Boy was that frightening. I didn't quite decipher properly if she listened to it because she was entertained or because it was the perfect way to keep the kids quiet because of the intensely eerie opening of the show. Something about a woman shrieking in fear, wolves howling and chains being pulled. And the stories would always be about aswangs, kapres, headless ghosts, mangled body parts. It was so scary and real I recall that my prayer before going to sleep included that my Dad would not be devoured by a harem of manananggals in the night. In fact, to this day, I sleep with my hands under my pillow or inside the blanket for fear that someone or someTHING would hold it in the middle of the night.

You couldn't really blame Mimi for her less than orthodox way of raising us. After all, she had never had children of her own and yet found her way in a strange situation where she had to help raise six kids. I have only two and they manage to drive me up the wall most of the time. So I cannot imagine how she was able to last all those years with us . All I can conclude was that she learned to truly love us up until the day she passed away. When she came to us, her hair was darker than the darkest moonless night. Then it turned salt and pepper through the years until finally it became silvery threads that reminded me of moonbeams and angels. She was extremely loyal and loving that anytime any of us were fighting, she would cry. If our Dad scolded anyone of us, and he was pretty good at it, she too would cry. Even when she left for her hometown Leyte because she was much too old and sickly, she would ride a habal-habal (motorcycle public transport) to call us just to greet us during our birthdays. It was in one of those rides that she fell and broke again her already once broken hip. It went downhill from there on.

We lost her the year before my brother got married. She appeared in my dream and in it she was falling in the buffet line about to partake of the wedding dinner I had prepared. She looked happy and content which to me was like her way of saying she approved of my brother's getting hitched. How we all miss Mimi.

In my time, we had Mimis, manangs and yayas that became our second mothers, first confidantes and primary counsellors. They listen to everything we can not tell our mothers or fathers and accepted without judgment. They laughed and cried with us, cooked our food, gave us baths and watched over us when we were sick. When we fell in love they gushed beside us and when we got hurt, they too cursed at all who broke our hearts. Some of them didn't even get married or had children of their own. I think those days are long gone. But it is not necessarily bad because it must mean that the pool for nannies is getting very shallow as there already are relatively better choices for jobs for them. But I am thankful that we had our Mimi. She was truly the angel that helped light the path for us to walk on. While nobody turned out to be some great big rocket scientist in our family, I dare say she would be proud at what we have become. Loving, patient, dedicated, funny, caring, pancit-with-rice eating bunch who will forever keep her in our heart of hearts.

Here is the recipe of "Maanghang" from Mimi's kitchen to yours:

500 grams Chicken Fillet, Pork Tenderloin or Shrimps*

3 Tablespoons Fish Sauce

3 Tablespoons Sugar

1/4 cup Water

Freshly Cracked Black Pepper

Marinate meat of choice in fish sauce and sugar for thirty minutes. Put in a saute pan with water and boil covered until tender. When tender, remove cover and let water evaporate. Add some oil and toss around until golden or caramelized. Add black pepper to taste. As I find that fish sauce have irregular amount of salt in them, you might have to add more sugar so do taste it and add as much as you wish. Also, this dish has very little sauce so if you want it to be saucier, just add a little water in the end.

For shrimps, proceed directly to stir-frying it in oil so as not to overcook the shrimps.

The Tipping Point

I have been thinking of Tipping Points a lot.

A tipping point is defined as "...the critical point in an evolving situation that leads to a new and irreversible development.." Immediately one can see the universality of the term. It is in fact applied in many fields such as in a. marketing- when a virtually unknown product becomes a household name b. politics- when people reach the humanly acceptable amount of bullshit before they attempt to overthrow a government (something which we Filipinos are all too familiar with) c. physics- the change from a state of equilibrium into a new and different state. And then of course, there is my definition and application of the concept to food and relationships in general.

In my exclusively amateur observation, I believe two kinds of tipping points may happen in any given event. One which may approach greatness, glory and everything good in this world while the other may point to the direction of complete nuclear annihilation. It can be that only one of the two may occur but it is not impossible that both happen one right after the other. In my epicurean world, this may be exemplified when 1. an ordinary chunk of meat is transformed to a rib-sticking, comforting, soul-moving stew and 2. when the very same stew becomes an unidentifiable pot of brown mush--an example of both tipping points happening in one continuous event.

In my experience, there are times I would be baking a cookie or cake and I look at it from outside of the oven and say to myself, maybe five more minutes. Five minutes later I am throwing away what could have been name-forgetting cookies which have now become curse inducing ones. It really takes only but a second or two for the moment of greatness to pass you by. You bake the cookie too long, it gets burned. You take it out too soon, and your cookie comes out raw. And that, as we all know it, is how the cookie always crumbles.

It is much, much more difficult though dealing with relationships. People are so much more complicated and unpredictable than baking ingredients damnit. You can't just stick a thermometer in them and say, alrighty this one here's just about right. There are too many nuisances and peculiarities with us human beings that French wines are goddamn bullet points compared to us. But knowing a thing or two about tipping points can do you some good, because as earlier mentioned, it can either lead to something poetically sublime or something even Hades will reject as it's own offspring.

Take for example when a shallow acquaintance becomes a life-changing, life-long friendship-- that is good. But when a perfectly aseptic, platonic relationship turns into an ember-smoldering love affair--that could be bad. It could be VERY bad. Looking forward to the next meeting where this boy is going to be there, the purchase of stilettos meant to lift your derierre when you have been living in your (egads) crocs the last 5 years, the extra five seconds of laughter for a just-okay-joke... these are significant details that point to the fact that a tipping point is being approached. Or not. At the other end of the spectrum, sometimes we wait too long to say hello and before we know it, the husband or wife of our dreams is married to someone else. Or-what could have been saved in friendship is now lost along with invectives that might not have been said had we found the courage to say goodbye earlier on.

Now let me just remind you that I am just a cook with a terrible case of insomnia. I have been known to trudge head-on proverbial hail or high water, walk across burning coals and tread waters with signs that say "piranhas, sharks and box jellyfish breed here" -not that they actually coexist. And I am the last specimen of human being to claim that I am the Confucius of relationships (Confused-Yes! Confucius-Hell no!). But all I am saying is that one could benefit from being aware of these tipping points. If you do want something to happen, then increase the heat of the oven of your heart (or any other anatomical part of your liking depending on your objectives). If you don't want things to happen, sometimes it is just okay to stay put. Yet other times, you might have to do a Forrest Gump and run like the wind the exact opposite way.

The point about tipping points is this: Once you've crossed it, there is just no turning back. If you take out a burnt cookie, you can't return it in the oven to try and resuscitate it back to edible land. Likewise, once you've crossed the point and you've taken the steps into elevating your friendship into something else, you can not undo that. You change and so does everything and everyone else. So if you are going to cross that point, you had better be sure that it is what you want. And if you're not sure, like most of the time I'm not, stick to baking cookies and making stews. You'll have a better chance of warming someone's heart and soothing a weary soul--Yours.

Who Can Cook

I am no food or culinary guru, let's get that out. But by some strange alignment of the planets and the stars, not too far back, I found myself guesting in an afternoon talk show where I managed to make a complete blundering fool of myself thereby dismissing any possible future for me in TV. Even the cameraman thought so. He told MY waiter whom I brought to assist me during the cooking segment, that my answer to the question the host asked, went twice around the world and landed in Mars. Well, I sure hope he never sees a time when my hands will have to be responsible for the meal he will be about to eat.

Anyway the question was, and this was the first question she asked..."Had I acquired my cooking skills through heredity or through studying". I suppose I could have given some safe answer like "Both hereditary and academic" but my neurons immediately went into a rabid debate at the speed of a hundred words per ten seconds. I said something about the fact that my Mum- who by the way is an excellent cook- was born in Vietnam, moved to the Philippines, migrated to Canada and finally set-up camp on the shores of the United States before she came to visit us in '97. (So you see my answer did go around the world. Once.) The point was, I practically grew up without her. We did not speak with each other for a very long time and I was uncomfortable and hesitant to give her biological contribution any credit to whatever cooking skills I may have acquired. However, some credit must be due her because it was her absence that lead to my long standing affair with food.

Some people are fortunate enough to have had grandmothers or mothers that have taught and nurtured in them the love and skill for this art. I didn't. I grew up thinking that the oven was another place for hiding plates and the refrigerator an appliance for cooling water and making ice. Such is a house run by a lawyer with six kids. Nevertheless, it was a happy and crazy house with many stories both funny and surreal. But I digress, that's another topic. I was quite literally thrown into the fire by my father and so my skills and love for food were primarily born out of necessity.

But as soon as I've served my first meal, I knew that I was stricken and smitten by the kitchen gods. I felt they were smiling down at me knowing that I was theirs for the taking. I actually thought I saw my father's eyes smile like he smiled from the inside as well. And by the time he said "very good" my mind was already wandering, thinking of what I should be cooking next.

Now I believe that there isn't a long list of requirements for one to be a good cook. I think that if you are the kind of person who likes to make people happy, then I'm sure you would enjoy and do well in cooking. Never mind if you've never even fried a hot dog in your life because I could be wrong, but I don't think it is genetic, this skill. It's different from singing where one can actually inherit either musicality or being completely tone deaf. If you're sintunado, that's pretty much it. If you can't find a rhythm to save your life, like say Kris Aquino, I'd encourage you to find some other way to make a living. But in cooking, you may screw up making something but that can immediately be corrected the next time you try making it. It's the kind of thing where the cliche practice makes perfect actually applies. However,and this is very important, the desire to perfect something comes with copious amounts of passion that can only come with love. And that, my friend, one does not learn in school.

I think it is more than biological and/or academic to have desire in your heart to elevate eating to dining... to want to unite and strengthen relationships over a well planned meal. You have something else in there when you can imagine conversations, lit candles, nice plates and a perfectly bubbling onion soup in the oven among other things. That is what makes a meal linger in the minds and hearts of guests long after the last plate is tucked in the recesses of your china cabinet.

While I may have no remembrances of warm cooking expeditions of the maternal type, I find that I am still fortunate because it is in that absence, that I found the other love of my life. I am fortunate because I have been blessed to create new memories for my family to go back to when we are all old and gray, when our children would have had children of their own. The road ahead is indeed paved with many more food stories that are waiting to be written. I am looking forward and truly honored to be writing these stories with you.