Grilling in Inkalot Country
/(Third prize winner of the 2023 Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Writing Award)
World’s longest barbecue grill in Bayambang, Pangasinan in 2014 (Source; Philippine Book of Records)
Grilling goes by different names throughout the Philippines: Inihaw in the National Language; ineyew, the Rinconada dialect of Bikol, but in standard Bikol it is inasal, a name shared in Hiligaynon; sinugba in Cebuano, and tinuno in Ilocano. That’s according to Datu Shariff Pendatun in his essay for the book Table for Ten: Asean Shared Food Traditions (Studio 5 Designs for the Department of Foreign Affairs, 2021). In the same essay, Pendatun traces our written roasting tradition to the roasted fish with ginger served “by native lord Rajah Colambu for his guest Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian companion of Ferdinand Magellan.” Three centuries later, “on the 29th of September 1898, at the dinner celebrating the ratification of the proclamation of the independence of the Philippines in Malolos, chapon doré or roast capon with bread, mushroom, and pork sausage stuffing was served as the rôti or roast course of the meal.”
So why does it survive to this day and age of sophisticates? The answer is not too hard to decode because it is common sense: grilling brings out so much flavor through caramelization of food sugars and by imparting smokiness to the flavor profile.
In my college Organic Chemistry class, my teacher once lectured that grilling produces carcinogens, to my utter disbelief. It is because, she explained, grilling produces heterocyclic aromatic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which studies show can cause anomalies in the DNA. Nevertheless, despite knowing the risks, the people of our town of Bayambang, Pangasinan are known to be especially enamored of grilled food, which we call inkalot.
We Bayambangueños particularly love grilled fish, especially Bonuan bangus (milkfish), tilapia, and pantat (hito or catfish). Our public market has an area devoted to a row of inkalot sellers, something you don’t get to see regularly in other towns.
And to prove this, Bayambang successfully set a new Guinness World Record on April 4, 2014, with its longest barbecue grill, in time for the town’s celebration of its quadricentennial.
The grill measured 8,000 meters (20,246 feet) and defeated an earlier record set by a town in Turkey at 6,166 meters. According to the Guinness World Records website, “the barbecue was made up of 8,000 grills connected to each other, each measuring 1 m in length, 58 cm in height and 21 cm in width. 50,000 kg of fish, 2,000 kg of salt, 480 blocks of ice and 6,000 bags of charcoal were used, and 8,000 people were involved.”
The feat was adjudicated by Seyda Subasi-Gemici during the town’s Malangsi Fish-tival – malangsi meaning two things, malansa or “fishy” and isdang tabang or “freshwater fish” in the Pangasinan language (not dialect please).
Barring culinary secrets that our forebears failed to pass down to us, my townmates grill fish the way most people do. Before cooking, the fish is, of course, thoroughly degutted and washed. The slime of hito is especially removed by vigorously rubbing the skin with a generous amount of salt or wood ash, then the fish is rinsed well. The fish is then grilled with chopped tomatoes, onions, and leeks packed inside its belly and seasoned with salt, lending the fish a touch of brightness to the taste, the stuffing giving a counterfoil to its innate fishiness (langsi or lansa).
Resty S. Odon
Fresh banana leaves may be used to wrap the fish before grilling, and the result should be similar to the en papillote method except that the banana leaf is expected to be burnt, lending a layer of pleasant aroma to the fish.
The grilled dish won’t be complete without the requisite dip of soy sauce with freshly squeezed calamansi (plus a dash of freshly chopped chili if desired), or anchovy fish paste (bagoong) with vinegar or, my personal favorite, a squeeze of kabelew, a local, orange-sized citrus with quite a gnarly skin and a unique taste. Anchovy bagoong with a dash of kabelew juice is a local dip I have not encountered anywhere, despite the heavenly result of such a pairing.
Another favorite grilled food around here is white corn, the Silangan variety, favored for its unique aroma. However, this particular variety suddenly vanished in the ’80s, replaced by a variety of corn with off-white and purple kernels.
The grilled dish won’t be complete without the requisite dip of soy sauce with freshly squeezed calamansi (plus a dash of freshly chopped chili if desired).
For the same reasons cited above, I personally prefer to eat okra and eggplant grilled. Our version of tortang talong at home always uses grilled eggplants with the skin on, which is later removed.
If you think my townmates have the simplest tastebuds because of the preference for inkalot, think again. In fact, I have never met a more discriminating people when it comes to gastronomic matters. Our traditional vocabulary easily bears this out.
Many of our words for taste, food texture, and aroma have very specific meanings not found anywhere else. The local vocabulary for taste, for instance, goes beyond the basics of masamit (sweet), maasin or maaplar (salty), anapseng (sour), ampait (bitter), mananam (umami-ful or savory), and anagasang (hot and spicy). The high nuance in taste is readily evident in such unique words as maablir, to describe the undesirably muddy taste of milkfish raised in non-ideal conditions. Only the freshest bangus from Bonuan, Dagupan City will do for our grill, or forget about it. When frying, roasting, or grilling, we make distinctions between tostado (toasted), atektek (toasted beyond desired doneness), and apugit (burnt).
Our terms for nakakasawa (Tagalog for cloying) are many: makapasawa (general term), makapaumay, makapalunit (used for overly rich food), makapatama (used for overly fatty food). Makapagew (pagew means breast) is like having the taste of arnibal (syrup) or being overly sweet. In general, an excess of any flavor is deemed mataway or matawa-taway (taway means taste) or matapang.
A curious term is mataldit, used to describe food that one likes the least or is not likely to try again. In contrast, there is the term malamlam, which refers to food so good that one wants to have it again and again. Masabeng refers to a dish that has too much leafy ingredient.
These terms suggest that local cuisine is all about studied minimalism, simplicity, and restraint, when it comes to mixing flavors. In a given dish, just one or a few spices dominate or punctuate the flavor profile instead of having a rich melange of flavors like in other Asian cuisines. This studied simplicity is the same attitude we have for grilled food. We are loath to complicate matters if straightforwardness will cut it.
As for texture or consistency, we have words such as makulaney (literally weak in other contexts) which means soft or has very little resistance when chewed, as in high-quality rice. The onomatopoeic man-gagnet indicates a cartilaginous consistency; crunchy but with pleasant chewy resistance. The variety of terms for slippery is quite large: andanglel (as in okra and saluyot), anggales (as in bad cassava when cooked), malamuyak (from lamuyak, alga; as in vegetable salad that is no longer crisp), malamuteg (mucilaginous texture as in immature coconut meat). Malamoy is also used in particular when the broth is slimy. Makanot means fibrous, as in the case of fibrous fruits and root crops. Aluney or alune-luney is a term to describe meat that is so soft its fibers fall apart, like in pulled pork. Malaberler refers to the texture of rice when not yet fully cooked, while the state of rice being undercooked is called abelbel or naeta. Other related terms are ginmalor (toasted and stuck at the bottom of the pot or pan) and inmaltey (turned liver-like in hardness). We particularly dislike overly grilled food that is already ginmalor and inmaltey.
Where English only has general terms for smells, especially unwanted smells, whether in food or elsewhere, the Pangasinan language has specific terms for smell or angob that do not exist even in Tagalog or other local languages. Pangasinenses, it seems, have clinically precise terms for certain odors, particularly highly undesirable odors, and food aromas are no exception. Of course, we have at least one very particular word for when grilling food. We use maasyot or maasyut to refer to a grilled item that was not cooked properly, resulting in the food undesirably smelling like firewood smoke.
The night Bayambang snatched the title of the world’s longest barbecue from another country, I went home from Manila to reunite and have fun with my former high school friends. On my way to Allen’s place at Rizal Ave., I was confronted with all the roads at the town center closed to traffic. The haze of after-grill smoke everywhere made the Poblacion area look like it just survived a major conflagration, and in a way, it did. I thus had to inch my way to our meeting place and pass at least two separate makeshift stages in the middle of two different roads, with bands from Manila playing and a throng of locals having a good time. Allen served us a new beef dish from Dagupan that was all the rage at the time: pigar-pigar. As the night wore on, our group was offered an iron grill for I think P2,000 which came complete with fish and other ingredients. We didn’t bite, finding it too expensive at the time.
Pigar-pigar (Source: Pinoy Kitchen)
We had no idea everything was donated by a local businessman Cezar T. Quiambao, who made good abroad and in Manila and who would someday become the town mayor. As they say, when there’s smoke, there’s fire, but that is another story.
At any rate, such is the impact of the inkalot in our town that, since 2016, the Guinness feat has been unfailingly commemorated annually as part of Bayambang’s celebration of its town fiesta.
References:
Pigafetta’s Philippine Picnic: Culinary Encounters during the First Circumnavigation, 1519-1522 by Felice Prudente Sta. Maria
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-barbecue
https://www.columbiadoctors.org/news/do-grilled-foods-cause-cancer
For certain Pangasinan terms, I am particularly indebted to: Raul Ramos, Clarita F. Tagab, Waldy F. Canalita, Dr. Leticia B. Ursua, Carmencita Pacis, and family members
Resty S. Odon is a Public Information Officer of the Local Government Unit of Bayambang, Pangasinan. He has edited and contributed articles to several newspapers and magazines, has written books on local history and won awards for his tourism work.
