There’s the sight of the colourful unfold. The sounds of laughing pals and the crunch of crispy lechón pores and skin. The odor of garlic wafting above the sinangag. And the complicated, contrasting tastes and textures dancing in your tongue. Welcome to kamayan, the Filipino feast that stimulates the senses—particularly the carnal, intuitive one many Western meals overlook: contact.
Kamayan (from kamay, “hand,” in Filipino) refers back to the pre-colonial custom of consuming with out cutlery. Sixteenth-century Italian scholar and explorer Antonio Pigafetta, who documented Philippine historical past throughout the Magellan expedition, famous that natives used picket spoons for serving and cooking—however not for consuming.
These days, kamayan is synonymous with a communal feast of rice, grilled or roasted meats, seafood, and fruit, all laid atop a banana leaf-lined desk, flooring, or floor. The bounty is usually loved on seaside outings or at residence on particular events resembling birthdays. At present, Filipino American cooks are bringing the custom into their eating places.
Chef Lordfer Lalicon, who helms 2024 James Beard Award-finalist Kaya in Orlando, Florida, likes that kamayan partakers are primarily pressured to place their telephones down. “You’re consuming collectively, you’re speaking collectively. You are able to do nothing however benefit from the meals in entrance of you as a result of you’ll be able to’t contact anything,” he laughs. “You’re enthralled.”
The feast is usually a household affair, however any strangers rapidly get acquainted digging into the identical pile of meals. “Consuming with our arms grounds us and creates a extra intimate reference to the components,” says Eric Valdez, govt chef and companion at Filipino restaurant Naks in New York Metropolis, which presents a kamayan tasting menu. He provides, “The style modifications … You are feeling the components extra, and the emotion coming from the meals.”
The hands-on format is typically intimidating for these extra accustomed to consuming with cutlery. However there’s a technique to what could seem to be insanity. Yana Gilbuena-Babu, chef and founding father of SALO Collection, a 50-week, 50-state kamayan pop-up, explains, “There’s etiquette in eating along with your arms. It’s not simply shoveling meals into your mouth.”
Gilbuena-Babu created the SALO Collection to each reclaim her tradition and share Filipino delicacies with others at its most conventional and accessible. Till just lately, she recollects, many within the meals trade had been searching for to “elevate” Filipino meals. “That form of rubbed me the improper manner,” she says. “Whenever you say you need to elevate one thing, it connotes an inferiority to one thing else. I don’t need to elevate Filipino delicacies. I’d moderately have a good time it.”
Whereas some check with kamayan as a “boodle battle,” individuals aren’t alleged to tussle for his or her meal. In line with Gilbuena-Babu, the transfer is to “decide, pack, push.” You decide up some rice and the dish you need to attempt. Then, you pack the whole lot right into a ball utilizing your fingers (not your palms) and push it into your mouth. Etiquette dictates that your fingers ought to by no means move your lips. Some diners designate one hand for consuming, and the opposite as a “serving spoon,” or to carry a plate or a drink.
Kaya co-owner and basic supervisor Jamilyn Salonga-Bailey agrees with Gilbuena-Babu’s method and sometimes persuades hesitant diners to ditch utensils, which she feels take kamayan individuals out of the expertise they signed up for. It’s vital, says Salonga-Bailey, to “launch the stigma of getting to eat ‘correctly’ in accordance with Western requirements.”
The significance of kamayan additionally lies in its historic resilience. As completely different international locations laid declare to the Philippines over the centuries, spoons and forks had been launched, and the very existence of this conventional meal was below menace. “It suffered some erasure,” says Gilbuena-Babu. “We had been made to suppose that we had been savages or uncivilized.”
Nonetheless, Filipinos preserved the observe by way of greater than 300 years of Spanish rule, almost 50 years of U.S. colonization, and three years of Japanese occupation. Whether or not diners notice it or not, kamayan is an act of anticolonial resistance. Listed below are some suggestions for channeling that spirit in your individual residence.
As a substitute of plates and utensils, line a clear floor with butcher paper or newspaper, then lay banana leaves on prime. The leaves can be found frozen or recent at many Asian, Latin American, and African grocery shops.
The one non-negotiable at any Filipino feast is rice. Place steaming mounds at numerous intervals for simple entry. Any plain rice is okay, however many Filipinos will let you know that sinangag, crispy garlic rice, is a should.
Contemplate dishes friends can seize simply, resembling marinated meats, pan-fried fish, lumpia (fried spring rolls), skewers (candy pork barbecue is all the time a success), and grilled squid or prawns.
Steamed bok choy and inexperienced beans are all the time a good suggestion, as are greens cooked in coconut milk. Sliced recent fruit—mangoes, pineapple, and tomatoes, as an example—up the visible enchantment.
It’s enjoyable to serve quite a lot of sawsawan (dipping sauces) and different salty, acidic, and spicy accouterments (resembling toyomansi). Conventional condiments embody vinegars; soy sauce; fish sauce; recent calamansi (or bottled calamansi juice); and uncooked chiles, onions, and garlic. Some additionally prefer to put out bottles of candy, tangy Mang Tomas pork liver sauce and umami-packed Maggi seasoning, or extra elaborate accompaniments resembling atchara (pickled inexperienced papaya relish) or bagoóng (deeply funky fermented shrimp paste).
