Manok Halang Halang prepared by Evangeline Smith This manok halang halang recipe comes from Evangeline Smith, entrepreneur and caregiver, who hails from Bayawan City in Negros Oriental. When her older sister in Manila needed help with childcare, Evangeline volunteered. She had never seen the capital and had always wanted to go there. She started to work part-time in her aunt’s bar, and shortly afterward met her late husband Jim. He waited a month before approaching her, but when he did, he made his intentions clear: he knew he would marry her. Taken aback, Evangeline responded that she was too young to get married and that she still had school to attend. Jim told her he was willing to wait and gave her a necklace as a friendly gift before leaving the Philippines to visit his family in the US. When he returned to Manila, he reminded her of his commitment to her and his promise to wait. Evangeline could sense Jim was a good and kind man, so in the end, he did not have to wait too long. Eight months after their initial meeting, they were married. They lived in Manila for eight years before moving to the south suburbs of Chicago, where Jim had called home for many years before his contracts in Asia. They cherished the full 33 years of their marriage in their loving home with their daughter. Cooking came easily to Evangeline because she spent a lot of time around her father as he cooked for the family. As a middle child with seven siblings, she helped prepare ingredients and clean the kitchen and sometimes accompanied her mother to market to help her sell fish. Evangeline’s family ate a lot of fish while she was growing up, saving pork and beef for Sundays and special occasions. She took culinary classes in high school, emboldened by the knowledge she picked up from her father. Despite all her experience cooking, nothing could have prepared her for her American husband and his American tastes. The first time Evangeline cooked fried chicken for Jim was disastrous. The insides were undercooked, he was frustrated, and her confidence was shaken. She became determined to learn how to cook to his taste and watched his mother closely when they visited her in Tennessee. She took a lot of notes and practiced diligently. She scoured local grocery stores for American products, sometimes substituting pan de sal for biscuits but making her own gravy. Over time, she became well-versed in Southern and Italian cooking, which proved to be much easier to execute after the family immigrated to America. Of course, it was during that time that Jim’s tastes changed and he began craving Filipino food. Accordingly, Evangeline taught him how to make the sour stews and braises he had grown accustomed to and together they shared a vibrant palette of flavors and foods. When discussing her manok halang halang recipe, Tita Vangie emphasized how much more accessible some ingredients were when her father prepared the dish. Things like lemongrass, papaya, sili labuyo, and coconuts grew in their backyard. Native chickens roamed freely. This dish comforts her because it was made so often. It was made so often because it was easy. Now, she asks the butcher to recommend a substitute for native chicken. She relies on chayote’s availability at the grocery store rather than holding out hope that she will find a papaya at the correct ripeness. She reaches for the cans of coconut milk without hesitation. According Tita Vangie, more than ingredients, what really impacts a dish is the love and joy you put into your cooking, “Be happy, create the whole thing, and put your heart into cooking. That’s how you create a good dish and everybody will love it.” ----------- The Panlasa Project: Community Cookbook (2020) records the recipes and stories of a small group of Filipino immigrants living in the south suburbs of Chicago. By archiving the culinary wisdom of this generation of Filipino Americans, the hope for the Panlasa Cookbook is to share narratives of immigration through food and to become a resource for culinary enthusiasts, historians, and the participants’ posterity. Director, Producer, & Food Stylist: Kayla Sotomil Cinematographer & Editor: Harry Cepka Camera Operator: Blair McClendon Camera Assistant: JB Barin Colorist & Sound Editor: Sean David Christensen www.kaylasotomil.com

Pork Tapa prepared by Fortunata Lamba This pork tapa recipe comes from Fortunata Lamba, who retired from her position as a catering manager but continues to run her own catering company part time. Her family hails from Baesa Quezon City. Fortunata was out with a friend listening to live music when they started a casual conversation with a man attending the event alone. During that meeting, the man told her there was a coworker he wanted to introduce her to, so they exchanged numbers. The next day she received a call from Jack, an Indian-American engineer working in the Philippines. They dated for two years before his company called him back to the United States. Fortunata experienced overwhelming culture shock on her visit to see him, but Jack followed her to the Philippines to convince her to return with him to live in Chicago. After much wooing and persuasion, she relented. They married soon after her arrival and settled in the south suburbs where they raised their two children. Food and cooking were central to Fortunata’s childhood. Some of her earliest memories include the sights and smells of roasting pigs and giant steaming woks at town fiyestas. Her grandparents cooked for these events and regularly prepared food for her and her five siblings at home. Along with Fortunata’s mother who cooked often, they were her first culinary teachers and sparked her interest cooking. This interest was nurtured by many others along the way. A close friend’s mother saw Fortunata’s eagerness to learn and became a mentor, bringing Fortunata along to the wet market and teaching her how to choose fresh ingredients and how to bargain. Fortunata delighted in these trips and never tired of seeing the jumping shrimps and lush local vegetables. Cooking stayed central to her life, even when her first jobs were outside of culinary spaces. Out of curiosity and desire for experience, she took low-paying side jobs to help her friend who worked in catering. Through these opportunities, she recognized her real passion for food and continued to pursue other avenues of learning, although she never committed to a career in food while she was in the Philippines. It was not until she moved to the US and was looking for work that she decided to enter the food service industry in catering. Food became her life and she has not looked back since. The challenge in working with food for Fortunata, however, was the exhaustion from cooking all day for clients and then returning home to feed her family. Takeout or leftovers from work often solved this daily problem, but she did feel some guilt around feeding her family with less care than she did her clients. She strives to make up for it now that she is retired by cooking and delivering food to her daughter any time she asks and by giving her son plenty of kitchen tips to help him improve his cooking. Despite this small regret, Tita Naty has gotten so much pleasure from feeding people throughout her career. Through her personal catering company, she provides delicious and soulful food to the Filipino American community in Chicago. Seldom does one attend a Filipino event that Tita Naty has not catered and the quality of her cooking is so consistent that her dishes can be identified by look alone. Tita Naty shared this pork tapa recipe because it is versatile, simple, and inexpensive to make. It is one of her signature and most popular dishes. From her long career, she has a lot of culinary wisdom to share, although the most important is always to cook with a lot of love:“You have to love what you’re doing. You have to please yourself. You have to make it tasty so that people will love it. You’ve got to just put your heart into it and the outcome will be the best. And when you see a lot of compliments like, ‘Oh my God. This is good.’ It makes you feel good that you did something.” ----------- The Panlasa Project: Community Cookbook (2020) records the recipes and stories of a small group of Filipino immigrants living in the south suburbs of Chicago. By archiving the culinary wisdom of this generation of Filipino Americans, the hope for the Panlasa Cookbook is to share narratives of immigration through food and to become a resource for culinary enthusiasts, historians, and the participants’ posterity. Director, Producer, & Food Stylist: Kayla Sotomil Cinematographer & Editor: Harry Cepka Camera Operator: Blair McClendon Camera Assistant: JB Barin Colorist & Sound Editor: Sean David Christensen www.kaylasotomil.com

Pancit Molo prepared by Pedro Sotomil This pancit molo recipe comes from Pedro Sotomil, a retired medical technician, whose family hails comes from Santa Barbara, Iloilo. While working in a Chicago hospital, Pedro recognized a familiar face among the other Filipino employees. Francisca, a nurse, had also emigrated from Iloilo, and she had attended the ballet school where Pedro had been an assistant instructor. With the nine-year age difference between them, he had barely noticed her at the time, but now in this new land, he was so happy to find someone closely connected to home. They became friends instantly and met up for dinners after work. Friendship quickly led to romance and they married in the city that they would make their home together. They relocated to the south suburbs where they raised their daughter. Pedro spent his childhood running errands in service of his parents’ candy factory and grew up surrounded by the sweet aroma of cooking confections. Between packaging and selling candies as well as tending to the other family businesses, he was often at his mother’s side, assisting her at the market or delivering parcels to his older and younger siblings at their respective schools when necessary. As the fifth child of eight, he had many responsibilities, however, cooking was never one of them. He learned to cook out of necessity when he and some of his siblings immigrated to the United States. Equipped with a copy of Philippine Cooking in America, the memories of traditional Filipino meals at home, and a general propensity for innovation, Pedro taught himself to cook so that he could continue to care for his siblings. This newly-acquired skill served him well when he began his own family. Pedro became the primary cook for his wife and daughter. Although always cooking out of a sense of duty rather than out of interest, he used it as a way to express his limitless creativity, particularly through the treats he sent with his daughter to share with her classmates at school. He utilized his knowledge of candy for these projects and on occasion, would artfully show off his dexterity with cellophane. His cooking skills improved over time and some of his dishes, including this recipe for pancit molo, became mainstays at family celebrations. He continues to reference his now tattered copy of Philippine Cooking and it is lovingly stained with traces of delicious meals from the last forty years. My dad and his pancit molo recipe were the main inspirations for the Panlasa Community Cookbook. I made molo with him throughout my childhood and I will never forget the sight of little dumplings on sheet trays all over the kitchen, the stickiness on my fingers after pinching all the wrappers shut, and my dad telling me that if done properly, the molo should look “like the head of a nun.” As I grew up, I thought about all the cooking lessons my dad gave me over the phone after I moved away from home. I, like him, learned to cook out of necessity and when I was so far from the familiar, all I craved was the comfort of his cooking. He taught me how to cook like he does, which is to cook intuitively without strict recipes: to cook to my taste. That led me to wonder what I would do when he was no longer around to instruct me. Our tastes change over time, and if I continue to cook to my taste, I might forget what my dad’s version of things tasted like, maybe even what his famous pancit molo tasted like. I might forget what size he cuts his shrimp or I might forget not to stir the soup too much after I add the molo. This project was born from the idea of remembering some of the details and to provide comfort by keeping these personal recipes alive and accessible. It showcases a style of cooking that does not quite mirror the cuisine of origin nor does it fall into the category of ‘American.’ This project is a snapshot of a unique cuisine in the making, one that will continue to evolve as generations of Filipino Americans continue to cook. Lastly, Panlasa was meant to commemorate the stories of the resilient and hardworking Filipino Americans who created new lives in a new land. As their descendants, we owe them a debt of gratitude for venturing out to provide us a world of new opportunity. We also owe them simply for keeping us well fed. This is for them and this is for all those who came after them. Maraming salamat sa inyong lahat. ----------- Director, Producer, & Food Stylist: Kayla Sotomil Cinematographer & Editor: Harry Cepka Camera Operator: Blair McClendon Camera Assistant: JB Barin Colorist & Sound Editor: Sean David Christensen www.kaylasotomil.com