(upbeat music)
- Hi everyone, my name is Francesca,
I'm on the Eater video team,
usually I'm behind the camera,
but today you get to hang out with me.
This is something that I've wanted to do
for a really long time,
Welcome to Halo Halo.
Filipinos make up the third largest Asian population
in the United States,
and for years there's been all this talk about
Filipino foods' growing popularity in the U.S.
As a Filipino-American I became really curious.
Initially, what inspired me
to learn more was Amy Besa's book,
Memories of Philippine Kitchens.
Tita Amy and her husband Chef Romy have
owned restaurants in New York since 1995,
and I'm going to head over to
their current restaurant, Purple Yam,
in Brooklyn and talk to Tita Amy
about this idea of authenticity.
- When I traveled all over the Philippines
to do my research I found three dishes
that were common to most of the region,
and they are eaten by all classes of society.
Adobo, sinigang and kinilaw.
Those are the three dishes
that I defined as food that was always ours.
That's really Filipino
and they're all united with the sourness.
- [Francesca] The unofficial national dish
of the Philippines is adobo,
but with 7,000 plus islands making up the Philippines
there are even more variations of this recipe.
So, in the mix of all these versions
what unites this dish as Filipino?
- My philosophy now is if you want to
define Filipino food, it's all about ingredients.
It's a very, very profound process of indigenizing food.
I think the key to an adobo
is the balance and harmony
between the salt and the sourness.
- [Francesca] So, what are the main components?
- [Amy] It's gotta be vinegar.
Protein braised in vinegar.
That to me is the meaning of an adobo,
and then, of course,
the other elements are salt or soy sauce.
Of course, garlic, lots of garlic,
and bay leaves and black pepper corn.
When you're doing a dish,
for me it's more like a story.
Who are the main characters,
and then who are the supporting characters?
That, for me, distinguishes our food
from the rest of Southeast Asia.
In other cultures, vinegar or sourness
is just used as a mitigating ingredient,
whereas in the Philippines it is a main character,
it's in your face.
You can use different vinegars
and come up with as many types of adobos.
(upbeat music)
- [Francesca] One of the most interesting things for me
was that you put coconut milk
in your chicken adobo
and I didn't grow up with that,
it was just soy sauce and vinegar.
I was talking to my best friend, who's also Filipino,
she said, "No, I grew up with coconut milk in my adobo."
It's different, depending on the region
your family comes from.
- [Amy] You do not put anything in the dish
unless it has a role, and it has a function.
So that's why Romy started putting in coconut milk
to balance the sourness,
and it's our most popular item.
- Your chicken adobo? - It's good.
- Yeah, that's for sure.
- I really have a lot of problems
with people defining what is authentic.
- It's very hard to define authenticity.
- You can't.
For me, what is authentic is what is natural.
So, if you use artificial chemicals or whatnot,
to me that's not authentic.
Whenever somebody, like somebody wrote me,
"You're not authentic!" Like, (beep),
I said,
I wrote this guy,
"And who gave you the authority to decide?"
That really makes me so mad.
- Yeah, I mean, have you heard that,
like people that dine at your restaurant,
"Oh, this not authentic adobo."
- Yeah, exactly, starting from 1995,
but you know what, I don't pay attention to that.
For me, I don't have room for that
because if you pay attention to them
you never progress.
- Right.
(upbeat music)
- [Amy] There are more Filipinos
opening up restaurants,
expressing their love and passion for their roots
and culture through food.
I think that's great.
This is one thing I tell a lot of Filipino-American chefs
and restaurateurs, to continue the work of promoting
Filipino food here, is that they need to understand
what the culture is and what the flavors are,
what the ingredients were.
How does it really taste using ingredients
that grew from our soil?
Once you get that connection,
you have to now interact with this environment.
You know, for example,
using rhubarb to sour sinigang.
This is something that is still new.
This whole concept of what does it mean
to do Filipino-American food,
and I think that's where people can run away with it
and have a home run,
because all these people were like, "What is Filipino food?",
*slams table* It has to come from you and don't be afraid!
Whatever you do you can be proud of it.
- Yeah, that is a wonderful message.
- [Amy] Isn't it?
It's like empowering.
- Yeah, for me as a Filipino.
- You're a Filipino-American,
so whatever you make Filipino food as, that's yours,
and nobody can tell you
you're not Filipino,
and you're not authentic.
Nobody has that right.
(slow techno music)
- [Francesca] As some of you may know,
halo-halo is also a Filipino shaved ice dessert
that literally translates to mix-mix,
which can essentially describe Filipino food.
A mix, a mix of different islands
and cultural influences,
all coming together to create something
that is uniquely ours to share.
So, in this series,
I wanted to explore the food that I grew up with
and learn how other Filipinos
are sharing our food with their community.
(upbeat music)