squash, anyone?

Traditional Filipino foods, our cuisine has a humble beginning. My grandmother used to tell stories about how did these foods existed. I was so amused; she knows a lot of our traditional food recipes using just simple ways of cooking. While she was cooking and telling the story I wonder if she could have been working as a chef, she would have a lot of customers, but luckily for me, she just shared her talent to us. She also told us about when the Spanish arrived in our shores and on how we were introduced to a different style of cooking that’s why we have big influence in the present Filipino dishes that serve in every homes of the Filipinos today. Like pochero, morcon, mechado, paella, estofado, callos, caldereta and menudo can be traced to Spanish cooking. Also some of the popular baked goods like pan de sal, ensaymada and leche flan. Chinese cooking also a have a big influence to our dishes like noodles that we have a version today, we called it pancit. Other Chinese-inspired dishes are kikiam, siopao, siomai and lumpia shanghai have been a favourite and become a part of Filipino way of life. Our cuisine can be best described as a mixture of the eastern and western influences; it provides an array of rich flavours, spices and colour which made our cuisine so delicious, irresistible and unique. Now I’m missing my grandma’s cooking like this one in the picture, Shrimp gambas with squash and string beans in coconut milk. Delicioso!