Food art refers to the artistry in the presentation and/or packaging of food. This is not garnishing in the Western sense, i.e., the addition of decorative touches, such as parsley sprigs, tomato or egg slices, to a dish or platter. This is artistic enhancement of the food itself or of the packaging in which it is served or sold. It is premised on the idea that the utilitarian need not be plain, that what appeals to the palate may also give pleasure to the eye, that the ephemeral, like the wrapping to be discarded, has its moment worth enhancing.
This art is not usually expressed on main (poultry, meat, fish, seafood) or vegetable dishes, in which the sensory appeal lies in freshness, or abundance, or the anticipation of flavor. A roast pig on a spit, for example, skin gleaming golden brown, evokes the appetite even without an apple in its mouth; so does a basketful of red steamed crabs, or a fish from the grill, crusty with coal-burnt skin, or a platter high with noodles sprinkled with crisp bits of crackling, smoked fish and kamias sections, on a rich palabok sauce. The visual appeal here lies in natural colors and shapes, and the flavors they promise.
Relishes and desserts are the most usual medium for food art. They are prepared much ahead of time, and thus allow time for design and decoration. For example, achara, pickle relish made of grated unripe papaya and vegetable, red and green bell pepper, purple shallots, carrots, cucumber, and singkamas or turnip—all preserved in and flavored with coconut vinegar, salt, and spices—is a prime medium for this art.
The textures lend themselves to carving into flowers, stars, leaves, words, and even figures of men and women, huts, and carabaos. The colors offer a varied palette, and so these are vertically arranged along the sides of glass jars not only in patterns of colors and shapes, but even into story vignettes: a farmer with a guitar walking under a tree, a woman traversing a field with a market basket on her head, a dancing figure, an arrangement of branches and flowers, or words like ala-ala or recuerdo (remembrance), or the name of the recipient of the gift-bottle. Mono- color pickles, such as singkamas, ubod, or dampalit, are also carved and arranged, or given color accents, like carrots, but it is the papaya vegetable palette that is most often given visual, even narrative, embellishment.
Fruits preserved in syrup, especially in the town of San Miguel de Mayumo, Bulacan, are another area of food art. Mayumo, the Pampango word for “sweet,” proclaims the town’s specialty: sweets of many kinds. Suha or pomelo, dayap or lime, kundol or wax gourd, santol, rimas or breadfruit, balimbing or star fruit, pineapple, nangka or jackfruit, native oranges, and guyabano or soursop are preserved in a light syrup in glass jars, comprising the original, the indigenous himagas (dessert). But never are they put in plain. They are bordado or carved with flowers, leaves, rosettes, whorls, patterns. They are bottled with these designs facing outwards, such that a shelf of these jars—the fruits translucent in the pale syrup, the light shining through their fancies—becomes visual pleasure promising gustatory joy. The pomelo rinds, washed in several changes of salt solution and dried, are in large bottle-high sections and can carry designs, letters, and names. The dayap rinds are tiny and rounded, therefore “embroidered” in lines and whorls. In Laguna the dayap are not usually carved, but are stuffed with nata de coco (coconut preserve) before being cooked in syrup, and there is artistry in the milky white peeking through the lime green.
The pastillas de leche or sweets of carabao milk and sugar from San Miguel de Mayumo are also famous, not only for their sweet fineness, but also for their wrappers. These are of multicolored thin paper, called papel de japon (Japanese paper), cut into stars, leaves, flowers—rose, cadena de amor, sampaguita—palm leaves and branches, letters “Filipinas” or “Philippines,” “Maligayang Pasko” (Merry Christmas), “Maligayang Kaarawan” (Happy Birthday), etc. The women cut the folded paper with small scissors, freehand, without the use of patterns or drawings. The pastillas, barely more than an inch long, are wrapped in the plain part of the paper, and the patterned tailsO float down from the epergnes in which they are displayed on fiesta tables. This fragile art is truly evanescent, since eating one such pastillas means throwing away the art that comes from the labor of many moments.
The arrangements and packaging of kakanin— snacks and sweets, usually made of sticky rice—is still another area for artistry. Kakanin served in bilao (flat baskets) is often a combination of sapin-sapin, ube, biko, suman, etc, and so the colors— purple, white, pink, green, light brown—are arranged in patterns. Puto and kutsinta (cakes made of rice flour) are steamed in bamboo tubes, large cakes or small molds, colored white, beige, brown or purple, sliced in trapezoids or rectangles or wedges, and arranged in steamers, platters, or baskets.
Suman, ibus, tupig, and tamales (rice and sticky-rice cakes) are wrapped in coconut fronds, banana leaves, nipa leaves, etc, and give play to another kind of creativity. Pale young coconut fronds are wound around suman sa ibus in most places; in Obando, Bulacan, darker green ones are woven into little triangular baskets. Breakfast puto-maya is spooned into banana-leaf twists in the Bantayan market, into packets elsewhere. Tamales are steamed in banana leaves, the wrapping style varying with the area—flat or fat; tied or untied; trapezoid in Meycauayan, Bulacan. The puso in Cebu and Cagayan de Oro are fist-sized, woven coconut leaf packages that hold steamed rice or “hanging rice”—for lunch in the market, and for traveling. The tupig of the Ilocos are rice cakes served on holidays, or in cockpits, where they are both aesthetic and convenient for eating during such exciting occasions.
The early morning markets where these snacks are served as breakfast with chocolate, salabat or ginger ale, or tea are the stalls that sprout outside churches during the simbang gabi or dawn Masses before Christmas, the daytime markets where the snacks become merienda or pantawid gutom (“bridging” hungers between meals), the baskets of itinerant vendors. These are the canvases for this art.
Food art may also be found in such foods as empanadas (chicken pies) which are deliberately fluted and pleated in milles feuilles style in Silay, Negros Occidental, or panaras whose edges are pinched and patterned in Vigan, Ilocos Sur; in the building of tortas reales and castillos, sweets from the Spanish tradition; and more recently, in the decoration of cakes learned from the American tradition.
It is in the presentation and packaging of native fruits and delicacies, however, that the native aesthetic is best seen. Here food art is expressed in native materials, like fruit, vegetables, grain; in patterns drawn from the surrounding landscape; and in indigenous ways through colors, patterns, arrangements, and packaging—making the edible artistic, the gustatory visual, and the ordinary special. • D.G. Fernandez
References
Fernandez, Doreen and Edilberto Alegre. Sarap. Essays on Philippine
Food. Manila: Mr. and Ms. Publishing Company, 1988.
________. Lasa. A Guide to 100 Restaurants. Quezon City: Urban
Food Foundation, 1989.