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Frankie Drogin, legendary among her Vineyard friends for the adventuresome and exceptionally delicious foods that come out of her kitchen, didnโt start cooking until she was nearly 40 years old. The closest she came was a cooking class she took in high school โ a Catholic school in Manila run by Maryknoll nuns and attended by girls from upper middle class Filipino families. โThey made us kill and dress a chicken,โ she recalls, โsomething none of us were ever likely to have to do.โ
Early in the semester, the nuns took the girls to the wet market, where they all picked out their chickens. โThen we had to feed and raise the chickens, so of course we grew attached to them like pets,โ she remembers. โAnd when it came time to off them, none of us were strong enough to cleanly slit their necks, so there were girls crying and screaming while these chickens were running around bleeding.โ
The point of this exercise, Frankie says, was to reinforce the connection between the living animal and the food on oneโs plate. โIn Tagalog,โ she says, โwe use the same word for both the animal and the food. We donโt say weโre eating pork; we say weโre eating pig.โ
And in the Philippines, Frankie adds, they eat the entire pig โ the entirety of nearly everything, in fact. โFilipino cooking often involves the whole animal,โ Frankie says. She mentions sisig, a popular bar food eaten with beer, in which assorted pig parts (ears, snoutsโฆ) are chopped into little pieces, fried with spices, and served sizzling. (Frankieโs sisig recipe, below, substitutes mushrooms for the pig parts.)
โAlso,โ Frankie says, โwe cook things with their heads on. You donโt see fish filets.โ Frankieโs favorite way to cook a fish is to steam it whole โ heads, tails, and fins included. Early in her marriage to newsman and author Bob Drogin, she says, โwhen Bob went out fishing, Iโd have to remind him: โBring home the whole damn fish!โโ Filipinos also cook shrimp with the head on. โYou suck the head,โ Frankie says. โWhen I eat a lobster at a restaurant, sometimes the waiters stop and watch me. I get in there and suck the hell out of it.โ
The Philippines, a country with high levels of poverty, has by necessity developed a culture that abhors food waste. โWhen I was growing up,โ Frankie says, โIโd watch my mom throw out just a tiny bag of trash every dayโ (she cups her hands to create a shape the size of a navel orange), โand that was because she used everything when she cooked.โ Dumpster diving is a way of life for some of the poorest Filipinos, and Frankie remembers watching a documentary on the topic that urged people to wrap their food waste carefully, to make it more sanitary for those who would later eat it. โThey scavenge to find bits of food, mostly pork and chicken,โ Frankie says, โand then they fry them over and over again to kill the bacteria. Thereโs a term for it โ โpagpag.โโ
When Frankieโs step-father first visited Marthaโs Vineyard, she took him to Menemsha, and they watched some fishermen whoโd just docked fileting their catch. โThey were dumping the rest of the fish into a bucket, and my step-father was completely befuddled,โ Frankie recalls. โHe said, โWhat are they doing with the rest of the fish?โ I said they would probably use it for chum. He said, โCan we come back for it?โ He wanted to salvage it.โ One of Frankieโs recipes, below, is a version of ceviche that is common in the Philippines and can be made with fish scraps.
Though she came late to cooking, Frankie was always interested in food. โMy mother was a flamboyant cook,โ she recalls. โShe had maybe a dozen good dishes that she made over and over again, but she had a really good sense of taste and presentation; sheโd serve things in coconuts and pineapples, and it was beautiful โ a joy to look at.โ Curiously, when teenaged Frankie managed to burn down her mother and step-fatherโs house after having a forbidden party while her parents were away (โThe terror of all parents, right?โ she says. โWell, that happened.โ), she remembers that they were able to save from the fire a few โridiculous things, like cookbooks.โ
As a young journalist, Frankie never cooked. โIn the Philippines,โ she explains, โat almost any level of society except for the poorest, one had help.โ During her first marriage, to a Canadian priest, her husband was posted to one of the countryโs wealthiest neighborhoods, and they had staff, including cooks. โI had an interest in food โ certainly an interest in eating,โ Frankie says, โand I would occasionally go into the kitchen just to watch.โ She also liked to read about cooking and enjoyed TV cooking shows. Later, when she was single again for 10 years after the death of her husband, she ate dinner out most nights. During that time, she developed an appreciation for good food and an awareness of what one might aim for in the kitchen. For a while, she lived with a couple of male friends, one of whom liked to cook. โHe was ambitious,โ she says. โHe went to sushi class. I liked to watch him work.โ A few of the recipes she makes now came from him.
Frankieโs favorite steamed fish recipe comes from the wife of the then Speaker of the House of the Philippines. One day in the mid-1990s, when Frankie was working for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the wife of the Speaker of the House showed up bearing an elaborate meal for the publicationโs editors, which she laid out in the editorsโ lounge. โShe put out a huge feast, but I especially liked her steamed fish,โ Frankie says.
Frankie met Bob in the late 1980s, when most of the American journalists in the Philippines were based in the Manila Hotel. Frankieโs office at ABC News was across the hall from the office of the LA Times, for which Bob was then the Manila bureau chief. The two were friends, and Frankie recalls that they played Scrabble from time to time, but it took another decade for their relationship to turn romantic. (โHe batted his beautiful blue eyes at me,โ Frankie says.) When they married in 2002 and Frankie moved to the States, she found herself with a husband and two step-children to feed, and no cook in sight. So she jumped right in. โI knew what things should taste like, and I could read and follow instructions,โ she says. โOver time, I learned that my true talent was to be able to read a recipe and know what it should taste like, and whether it would be good.โ
Now, Frankie is a prodigious home cook who makes foods of many nationalities, including her own. Her adobo (chicken stewed in vinegar, the national dish of the Philippines) is exceptional. โEvery household in the Philippines has its own way of doing it,โ Frankie says. โSome people would call mine bastardized, because I add coconut milk. I just like the taste. And also, the American palate is not used to that very sharp taste of just vinegar.โ
The recipes below are examples of ways in which Filipino cooking eschews food waste, and they showcase many of the traditional components of Filipino flavoring, including vinegar, soy sauce, and calamansi. Not included is bagoong, a staple of Filipino cooking, which is a dense, anchovy-like fish sauce. One version of bagoong looks like mud, Frankie says, โand it stinks. When I married Bob, he made me promise that I would never bring bagoong into the house.โ
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RECIPE: Mushroom Sisig
- Yield: Serves 4 as an appetizer 1x
Description
What to do with pig face, youโve probably never wondered. Sisig is one of the stars of a class of Filipino food known as pulutan โ snacks made to accompany beer or alcohol. Pork sisig is a hot, chewy, cartilaginous mess of chopped snout, cheeks, ears, and pork belly, fried with garlic, onions and chilies, and served steaming on a sizzling platter. The late Anthony Bourdain rhapsodized over it, calling it โa divine mosaic of pig parts.โ There are other versions, including seafood and vegetarian iterations. Since I didnโt have a pig head lying around, I turned to a mix of wild mushrooms to mimic the look and texture of pork sisig, and served it stove-to-table in a cast-iron pan.
Ingredients
- 4โ6 Tbsps of butter
- 1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and minced
- 1 1-inch piece of ginger, minced
- 8 cups of mushrooms (like shiitake, maitake, or oyster), diced small
- 1โ3 Thai red chilis (also called birdโs eye chilis), sliced thinly (for less spiciness, remove the seeds and membrane)
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 1/8 cup cane vinegar, coconut vinegar, or rice vinegar
- 2 tsps sugar
- 1 heaping Tbsp mayonnaise
- 1 small red onion, minced
- 6โ8 calamansi limes (Philippine limes) or 1 regular lime
- 3โ4 scallions, sliced in small rounds
- 1 egg yolk (reserve white for another purpose)
Instructions
- Heat a cast-iron pan on high heat. When hot, add 4 tablespoons of butter.
- When the butter has melted, add the garlic and ginger, and sautรฉ for 30 seconds to a minute. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally to prevent burning, until they are dark brown. Add more butter (or olive oil) if dry.
- Mix in the chilies, soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar. Sautรฉ until well mixed. Add mayo and mix well.
- Lower heat, and add red onions. Mix and warm through. The red onions should remain crunchy.
- Squeeze the limes over the mushroom mixture, and sprinkle scallions over everything.
- Add an uncooked egg yolk to the middle of the pan, turn off the heat, and serve immediately in the skillet, mixing the yolk into the hot mushrooms at the table.
RECIPE: Garlic Fried Rice (Sinangag)
- Yield: Serves 4
Description
In a Filipino home, leftover rice frequently finds a second life as sinangag, a straightforward garlic fried rice. It can show up at any meal but is especially ubiquitous at breakfast, beside a fried egg and a protein like marinated beef, caramelized cured pork, a chorizo-like sausage, or fried butterflied milkfish.
Ingredients
- 4 cups cooked jasmine rice thatโs at least a day old
- 4โ5 Tbsps canola oil or other neutral oil
- 1/2 head of garlic, peeled and sliced
- 15โ20 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
- Kosher salt to taste
Instructions
- Separate grains from any clumps of rice with clean hands rubbed with oil. Wash hands.
- Place the oil and the sliced garlic into a cold sautรฉ pan or wok, and cook on low to medium heat until the garlic slices are golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside on a towel-lined plate.
- Add the minced garlic to the oil remaining in the pan and cook on low to medium heat until lightly toasted.
- Add rice. Salt like you mean it. Stir-fry rice for 3 or 4 minutes.
RECIPE: Kinilaw Na Isda
- Yield: Serves 4
Description
An older cousin of ceviche, kinilaw is very fresh raw fish bathed in vinegar rather than citrus. Because kinilaw originated as a quick meal for fishermen while at sea, it is marinated for a shorter time than ceviche and is ready to eat after 15 minutes (though marinating for longer is also okay). Ideally, one should use Filipino cane vinegar (Datu Puti brand) or coconut vinegar, but in a pinch, rice vinegar will do (despite the withering contempt of purists). A mellower version of this dish, Kinilaw na isda sa gata, incorporates coconut milk and omits the sweet and hot peppers and the lime juice.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cup cane or coconut vinegar (or rice vinegar if need be)
- 1 small red onion, minced
- 1 2-inch piece of ginger, minced
- 1 small green bell pepper, diced
- 1 small red bell pepper, diced
- 1 Thai red chili, seeds removed, sliced thin (optional)
- Juice of several calamansi or 1 lime
- Salt and black pepper to taste
- 1 pound very fresh fluke or other white fish, or yellowfin tuna, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Instructions
- Combine 1 cup of vinegar, the onion, ginger, green and red peppers, sliced chili, and lime juice in a non-reactive bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
- In another non-reactive bowl, combine the fish cubes with the remaining ยฝ cup of vinegar to “wash” them. Let sit for a couple of minutes, then squeeze out the fish and remove it. Discard the liquid.
- Add the fish to the first vinegar mixture. Mix well. Cover and chill for at least 15 minutes and up to 4 hours. Serve very cold.
Notes
RECIPE VARIATION: Kinilaw Na Isda Sa Gata (with coconut milk)
Ingredients:
- 1 cup cane or coconut vinegar
- 1 cup coconut milk
- 1 small red onion, sliced thinly
- 2-inch piece of ginger, sliced into matchsticks
- Salt to taste
- 1 pound very fresh yellowfin tuna, cut in ยฝ-inch cubes
- Extra virgin olive oil for drizzling
Instructions:
- Combine 1/2 cup of vinegar, coconut milk, red onion, ginger and salt to taste in a non-reactive bowl.
- Put the fish into another bowl with the remaining vinegar to “wash” it. Squeeze and remove it after a couple of minutes and discard the liquid.
- Add the fish to the vinegar–coconut milk mixture. Mix well. Cover and chill for at least 15 minutes and up to 4 hours. Drizzle with olive oil when ready to eat. Serve very cold.
