Sunday, June 24, 2007 Estremera: Slow food By Stella A. Estremera Spider's Web
IT WAS my annual cobweb-sweeping hiatus in our kubo up there in the mountains where electricity still has to make its presence felt and the only way to stave off hunger is to make your own fire...
Chopping up some ingredients, putting them all together in a pot and getting a fire going amid the cold wind and equally cold weather makes for really slow food. You can't just leave what you're doing to attend to other things. You have to keep watch; fanning the firewood every once in a while as the fire finds it difficult to flicker on. The simplest food preparation would seem the hardest -- like boiling pasta.
For a change, cooking the sauce of a vegetarian putanesca was easier, and faster. One big fire, one big kawali, slosh the ingredients around the hot kawali until they are hot and bubbly in less than ten minutes and you're done.
Boiling the pasta? It means watching the fire for more than ten minutes. Yes, the instructions say ten minutes of boiling, but those instructions were placed there by high-tech printing machines with the regular gas and electric stove in mind. That's not what we have up there in the boondocks. In fact, the hardest part of all may seem the simplest to all of us down here -- getting the water to boil.
Now, if you know spaghetti noodles... It won't fit into an ordinary pan. You just have to get the big stockpot, fill it 3/4 of the way with water, and wait... and wait... and wait... and darn wait, in between stoking up the fire and fanning it back to life.
That's what you need to do when you're tackling firewood, cold weather and wind. The ten minutes of boiling is preceded by 20 minutes of huffing and puffing and waiting. At first it can be frustrating, but then you soon realize there's no other way and you quiet down, relax, and watch the fire. What earlier on was an almost career-girl-frenzy type of desperation (you know, with matching pouts and sighs of disgust) to keep a fire going becomes a study in patience and perseverance, and that's when you feel at peace with yourself. Zen to the max.
Finally, there are teeny-weeny bubbles coming up, that's good enough because from experience they will never become as bubbly as we see them every morning when we boil water for coffee. In this cold mountain, all you can ever make are small bubbles of heat. That's good enough.
Soon as the pasta goes in though, the small bubbles will disappear... The pasta noodles are too cold, they have just made the slightly boiling water warm, you have to wait much longer for the bubbles to return.
The ten minutes that it should take for the pasta to be al dente thus stretches on as the stockpot full of hot water cools faster than you can build up a fire anew. But it was fun... therapeutic even. For it showed me that I may have embraced technology and all its conveniences, I have not forgotten the basics and we are not going hungry.
The quiet of the boondocks was broken only by the engine roars of trucks and container vans traversing the sloping road, the occasional loud voices from somewhere down the road of mothers calling out to their children to come home or get it, and the loud sound system loaded on a jeepney announcing "pirit" and "preskong isda" for sale. Not even the squeaky, electronic sound of an AM radio can be heard. No music, no television. Just nature.
Just a few minutes down, the waterfalls beckon, its rushing sound becoming louder as we slipped down the muddy trail, caking our feet and slippers with gooey clay making our feet more slipper still. But it was fun.
By noontime, we have had our brunch of pasta without the luxuries of a modern kitchen, we have dipped in the pool at the waterfalls, and we have trekked up once more to appreciate the view and just... chill.
And then Kublai walks over reminding us that he has a meeting at 3 p.m., we have to pack up and leave. Reality bites.
It's short breaks like this though that enables me to trudge on with the vagaries of life and living for yet another year. Slow food is good for the body and the soul, especially when you realize that you have just cooked one darn wonderful pasta with just wood and fire without mixing it in with the taste of smoke.
