First Prize, Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award, 2023

The Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award (DGF Award) on its 21st year had as its subject matter grilling, which goes by different names throughout the country: Inihaw in the National Language; ineyew in the Rinconada dialect of Bikol but in standard Bikol it is inasal, a name shared in Hiligaynon; sinugba to the Cebuano; and tinuno to the Ilocano. That’s according to Datu Shariff Pendatun in his essay for the book Table for Ten: Asean Shared Food Traditions (Studio 5 Designs for the Department of Foreign Affairs, 2021). In the same essay, Pendatun traces our written roasting tradition to the roasted fish with ginger served “by native lord Rajah Colambu for his guest Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian companion of Ferdinand Magellan.” Three centuries later, “on the 29th of September 1898, at the dinner celebrating the ratification of the proclamation of the independence of the Philippines in Malolos, chapon doré or roast capon with a bread, mushroom, and pork sausage stuffing was served as the rôti or roast course of the meal.”

I’m convinced there must have been an accident in some pre-colonial kitchen. How else do we explain the audacity of this dish? I can just see how it happened. Pieces of burning charcoal fell into a heap of freshly grated coconut. The white coconut shreds were quickly scorched, crackling with the ember, releasing a sweet, nutty aroma. In a moment of panic, someone grabbed a container of vinegar, perhaps mistaking it for water, doused it over the live charcoal, and then covered it quickly to smother the flame. A stroke of genius or desperation followed: uncovering the burnt coconut (now drenched in vinegar), and faced with a hungry crowd still to be fed, the cook gingerly removed the charcoal, and proceeded to squeeze the coconut for its cream— as if nothing had happened. 

Thick gray streams oozed out between the cook’s fingers and dripped into a sooty soup. It looked unpalatable for sure, but the aroma was mouthwatering. This could work, she thought, and intuitively added garlic and onions, then seasoned with salt and pepper. Boldly, she poured this over the eggplant she had been grilling. After mashing them together, she gathered the courage to taste it.

What a surprise! The cream distilled all the irresistible goodness of inihaw (grilling) into a savory dressing, thick with the aroma of char-grilled flavors, spiked with garlic heat and wonderfully cut by sour vinegar. It tasted like liquid inihaw na baboy (charcoal roasted pork)—without the meat. Thus, a cooking method was invented. Kulawo, it will eventually be called.

The narrative is fiction. But it is the storyline my imagination runs to as I watch Aling Lina Salian, a bangkera (boatwoman) at Lake Pandin, put burning coconut shells from an open fire on the lakeshore into a stainless-steel bowl of grated coconuts.

Or when I watch Ugu Bigyan, celebrated potter and heritage cooking advocate, demonstrate kulawo cooking with large charcoal chunks in beautiful stoneware bowls from his atelier in Tiaong, Quezon.

Or when I see our kusinero (cook), Emer Acero, who learned to prepare kulawo from his lolo, squeeze the burnt cream from the still warm coconut.

Or when Marielle Tolosa, a hometown vlogger, describes a childhood memory of their shanty home in Liliw filling up with smoke as her father, a jeepney driver, prepares kulawo before plying his route.

Or when I stop over at Dhang’s eatery in San Pablo City and find spoonfuls of kulawo being scooped into plastic bags for the long line of customers waiting to take home ulam ng taga bukid (viand of those from the farm).

My mind leaps into this story thread from our hometown’s collective memory, spun by an unbroken line of native kusineras and kusineros who have turned an ancestral kitchen disaster into an heirloom recipe.

Two ways to serve kulawo have survived through generations and bypassed the influence of colonizers. One is kulawong talong, where the kulawo cream is poured like a vinaigrette over chargrilled eggplant that has been skinned and mashed. This is topped with red sili (chili) for a spicy kick. The other is kulawong puso ng saging, where banana heart is boiled and cut into strips, squeezed dry, then soaked in coconut milk for a few minutes before the kulawo cream is poured into it. Another way to prepare the puso ng saging is to cook it like ginataang gulay (sauté the strips in garlic and onion, add coconut milk, simmer), then add the kulawo cream at the end for smokey flavoring.

Some old-timers have linked the word kulawo to kulob, which means to contain in high heat or to roast.* Others have associated it with kilawin, which means to soak raw food in vinegar until it is “cooked” by the acids. It has evolved into a standalone term which refers to the combination of roasting over a fire and soaking in vinegar.

My favorite is kulawong talong, not only because it is easier to prepare, but also because the grilled eggplant soaks up the burnt cream into a thick mash easy to slather on top of inihaw na tilapia (roasted tilapia), pritong hito (fried catfish), or lechon sa pugon (oven-roasted pork). The pairings play on contrasting textures and taste profiles: crunchy versus mushy, salty versus sour-sweet. Perfect with piping hot, sticky white rice.

In Casa San Pablo, a B&B and cafe, they now serve it as canapés over biscocho (twice-baked bread) and as topping on artisan pizza. A pitch to the next generation who must be convinced to keep kulawo relevant and relished.

Two ways to serve kulawo have survived through generations and bypassed the influence of colonizers.

For San Pablo natives or “Sanpabluy,” it is the aroma of burning coconut that brings us home. Growing up in the 1970s, we remember how afternoons in San Pablo were thick with the sweet, subtle savor of smoke from copra drying fields and factories desiccating coconuts. The scent was strongest as the afternoon was fading, wafting in as the 5 p.m. siren wailed from the Kapitolyo (Capitol), signaling the end of the workday.
Like an invisible ribbon, the aroma connected towns and plantations at the foothills of Mount Banahaw between Alaminos, San Pablo, and Tiaong. A telltale sign of life laced together by the threads of coconut production. All that dissipated with the collapse of the coconut industry in the 1980s. But the memories rush back instantly, vivid and rich, when charcoal hits coconut, releasing smoke, aroma and, nostalgia in a bowl of kulawo.
* “kulob”, https://www.tagalog.com/dictionary/kulob
**“kinilaw”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinilaw

An Mercado Alcantara, writer and editor, is also an innkeeper of Casa San Pablo, a heritage advocate, clay artisan, and culinary history geek for San Pablo City. She has had extensive newspaper and magazine experience including being editorial director at ABS-CBN Publishing where she supervised 13 magazines. She graduated from Ateneo de Manila University and attended the Radcliffe Publishing Course at Harvard University and the Craig Newark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York.

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