Savoring Memories

By: Ehlaine Lehman

 

When we first arrived in Chicago, the city was experiencing an influx of immigrant professionals, including from the Philippines. At that time, Philippine food items were still relatively scarce in the city. Sari-sari stores were still not in the immediate vicinity, so we went to Chinese shops on Argyle Street and Japanese shops on North Clark Street and West Belmont Avenue, to find ingredients and frozen foods. My Lolo and Lola would often send us packages filled with confections and items they knew we loved, to soften the isolation my mother faced raising a young family in the American midwest.

Unlike other immigrant groups or other Filipino immigrants to other parts of the United States, Filipinos did form an ethnic enclave in Chicago and were scattered. There were very few from the Visayas in the area.

But my parents formed an intimate, social circle of friends – immigrant professionals and academics – in our building that would help one another. This trusted group included a Haitian family named Auxila – their daughter Estella was first to befriend me here – and three Filipino families from different regions in the Philippines. It also included a Korean family named Chae with eight children with a wide age-range, Mr. Chae was a teacher and Mrs. Chae managed the “trading post” they had set up in the living and dining rooms of their four-bedroom apartment. My parents would often purchase or barter services for Asian and other items they could not find in the Chinese and Japanese markets or the western grocery stores.

One day my parents came home with three large barrels of wild Alaskan salmon and dried seaweed from the Chae family’s trading post. I liked the seaweed immediately but wiggled my nose at the newly-introduced fish. My mother experimented with Philippine recipes, but she had trained as a concert pianist. And we had so much fish. So, she shared the salmon with the other families and invited everyone to dinner. The Auxila family brought poulet aux noix (chicken with cashew nuts) and pain palate (sweet potato bread). The Chae family brought bags of rice and platters of bulgogi. While the Filipina mothers gossiped together and prepared Philippine-inspired salmon dishes and traditional dishes, my mother would teach us how to read music and give piano lessons, while the older children helped set the tables. Together we would all eat. Tamarind sinigang, laswa, adobo, pesang isda – and also traditional dishes like pancit lug lug, ginataang hipon, chicken inasal, adobong pusit, kansi, and squid rings. For us, these foods had such a special way to make us happy with the tastes, aromas, and textures. It surpassed our languages and different cultures. We enjoyed our neighbors’ foods and we came to know the Islands’ cuisines not just as Visayan, Tagalog, or Ilocano but as Filipino.

I savor these memories. I think of the early days, as we continue to build a community within a larger community and to make the Rizal Center a welcoming place for all in the Bayanihan spirit. Because we are Filipino.

Super Sarap! Piaya is an Ilonggo unleavened toasted flatbread filled with muscovado and is a popular delicacy in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental. Enjoy!

Ingredients
1 cup flour, plus extra for
dusting
12 tsp muscovado sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tbsp cold butter, cubed
5 tbsp ice water

In a food processor combine flour and cold butter, process until it resembles coarse crumbs.

Pour in ice water then continue until it clumps into one dough. Remove the dough from the food processor then place in a flour dusted work surface, knead gently then divide into six pieced

Flatten each piece with your finger, add 2 tsp of muscovado sugar in the middle, fold edges like a dumpling then roll into a flat circle roughly 4 inched in diameter. Do it with the remaining dough then cook in a pan with a bit of oil until golden brown on both sides.

Serve as a whole or you can slice them into sections

Cook Time is based on a single piaya