(http://bourdainmediumraw.com/essays/view/1693)
About my essay: The simple pleasures of just having eggs with sardines, dried salty fish, baked beans, spam, corned beef, fried rice and pandesal was all we had day after day. Make the most of what you have.
Hot steaming crab legs, medium rare steak, grilled tilapia, pork and chicken on a skewer and pan fried noodles were all that was left to my hungry imagination… The constant drumbeat like sound on our tin rooftop was deafening enough to wake me up from my sleep. It got louder and louder while the winds were howling like angry beasts.
It was a little over a month before Christmas when our place got hit by a category 4 typhoon. Classes on all levels were suspended indefinitely for the time being. I was about 10 years old at that time. There was no power and the streets eerily depicted a poor imitation of the canals in Venice. My family gathered some canned goods, dried salty fish, eggs & a pot full of old rice from our kitchen downstairs.
Upstairs, our bathroom became our cramped but manageable makeshift kitchen. We had one-burner kerosene pumped portable stove, a frying pan, a spatula, some garlic & a half filled can of vegetable oil. Since all markets were closed due to the heavy flooding, we sustained ourselves with having ample rations of our food supply for the entire week. Breakfast consisted of a cup of instant coffee and pandesal (breakfast bun) with butter.
Everything looked pretty bleak as the water kept rising for it rained nonstop for seven consecutive days. But somehow, I remembered vividly the sea-like smell of the canned sardines being sautéed accompanied by garlic fried rice and eggs over easy. Spam omelet, corned beef omelet and some baked beans on the side was a delightful meal during lunch or dinner.
The weather was uninviting and unfriendly but we all gathered together as a family eating under one flickering flame from our kerosene lamp and being thankful for the food on our table. The simple pleasures of just having eggs with sardines, dried salty fish, baked beans, spam, corned beef, fried rice and pandesal was all we had day after day. It wasn't about having fancy equipments or cooking in a state of the art kitchen. Even fresh produce, poultry and meat were non-existent.
That whole week was a humbling experience for all of us and yet we enjoyed spending time with each other, telling stories, playing cards, reading, or just simply taking a leisurely nap after lunch and going to bed early after dinner. We couldn’t go anywhere and were pretty much stuck on our second floor. It was down to the very basics, of practically surviving daily with whatever we had.
But during those seven godforsaken days, I've come to realize that you can make a decent meal with almost anything. Sometimes cooking well is not even about cooking for under such humbling circumstances, it doesn’t know any boundaries at all.
And as the saying goes…”There’s no such thing as wrong food. Sometimes, you just have to make the most of what you have.”
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