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Food is how my parents shared filipino culture with me and my sister. We didn’t speak tagalog or bisaya, watch teleseryes (soap operas) with our mom, or listen to filipino music (unless it was karaoke night at our house). My dad, who frequently catered for the family parties or filipino community events, cooked most of our meals growing up. He began teaching my sister and I how to cook as soon as we were tall enough to stand over the stove. In our family, successfully cooking fried rice for breakfast was a rite of passage.

Growing up my mom would always say “Breakfast is the most important meal.” Some days my parents would wake up early to make us garlic fried rice, fried eggs, and longanisa (sweet sausage) or tocino (cured pork). Other days my dad would make champorado (sweet chocolate rice porridge) or buy fresh pan de sal (bread rolls). Sharing meals as a family was important in our home. My sister and I didn’t need to know the language to understand that our parents were saying “I love you” every time they cooked something they learned from their parents.

Filipino food is described as “lutong bahay.” While the phrase literally translates to “home cooked,” to me it means the type of lemon-lime soda in my parent’s chicken adobo, the extra black pepper in my mom’s pancit (noodles), or the way my dad adds peanut butter to his humba (braised pork). My parents don’t have recipe cards from their grandparents or their great-grandparents. Recipes are passed down orally and evolve with every generation.

In October 2020, in an effort to reconnect with my filipino heritage, I decided to teach myself how to make traditional filipino foods and experiment with recipes inspired by traditional filipino foods. A selection of these culinary creations can be found on Instagram: @flipnkitchn.