Comments on: Key Ingredients for Kare-Kare

By: myra del rosario

myra del rosario — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:20:28 +0000

My kids love kare-kare but they get it only at handaan elsewhere. I have never in my entire life made it. I love to cook but not on the scale required to come up with kare-kare. Wish I had the patience. I always thought kare-kare was from Cavite because i remember it referred to as kare-kareng Cavite while i was growing up. Now it’s simply called kare-kare period.

By: MasPinaSarap

MasPinaSarap — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 02:35:15 +0000

After making Kare-Kare yesterday, I’m afraid I might have gave you the wrong information on what to eat on the saging ng puso. Just to be sure, discard all the purple outer casings, the little white stamens can be eaten, but they must be freshly white and not discolored, and you must pinch the end off and pull the white string from within out, if you don’t it will be really bitter. The actual white core is edible, slice it crosswise around the entire core to loosen it, and then it can be chopped and cooked. My nang showed me first hand. Sorry, if this caused anyone trouble.

By: gonzo

gonzo — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 23:05:41 +0000

oops richard, not robert! haha

By: gonzo

gonzo — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 23:01:15 +0000

oh and that just reminded me, some people collect stamps; i collect pestles and mortars. every culture, every country has a version of it, so wherever i go i pick one up for my collection. i now have ‘molcajetes’ from all over the world!

By: gonzo

gonzo — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 22:57:54 +0000

Robert, all good questions, and i’m relieved that there is at least one person other than myself on this earth that ponders these very questions. The origins of kare kare may never be known, only, as you have pointed, surmised. it’s one of those questions in which the answer is lost in time, like “what did the dinosaurs really look like?” we can only guess.

and if its any consolation to you, everyone in my family (and most of the family friends and our social network) still uses a pestle and mortar. you should see the one in my mother’s kitchen: made of stone but worn down from decades of use.

By: RST

RST — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 16:10:20 +0000

Thanks. If anyone remembers where it is, please let us know. I consider the “problem” of kare-kare one of the great key questions of food history-on the same level as the “problem” of tomatoes in Europe or the “problem” of the bagel etc It encapsulates so many of the mysteries of both international (the diffusion of peanuts throughout Asia and Africa, the nature of “curry” etc) as well as Filipino food history (what did Filipino food taste like before the arrival of the Spaniards, why is the Filipino kitchen not as spice-oriented as those of neighboring countires, what is the essence of the Filipino palate).

By: Marketman

Marketman — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 08:32:30 +0000

Richard, I have tried to locate that discussion but can’t find it. Unfortunately, my search function seems to cover only contents of the main post, not the comments. At any rate…it wasn’t much more than has already been raised here…the article by Reggie Aspiras based on the letters you have identified and read was the basis for that avenue of thought…

While there isn’t a kare-kare equivalent in Indonesian cooking, gado-gado employs a very similar crushed peanut sauce over all of the vegetables… And some Malaysian soups/stews include crushed nuts as well.

By: RST

RST — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 18:50:47 +0000

I googled and found the two Reggie Aspiras articles with Dr. Soler’s letter as well as the initial piece which has Gene Gozalez and Claude Tayag’s opinions (apparently, Reggie Aspiras is some sort of a food writer for the Inquirer). I will weigh in later on several details in those pieces-just want to say for the moment that there were many broad generalizations made in forming some of those opinions (for instance, that Thai/Malay etc curries need to have coconut in them to be “curry”//many “curries” do not take coconut milk/cream). The Cainta/Sepoy origin of kare-kare is intriguing but until we find historical proof, it is merely conjecture. I lean towards a Southern Indian (not necessarily “Sepoy”) origin and think that this area must also be the missing link for various African peanut-sauce based dishes (such as the mafe from peanuts I mentioned earlier-but there are several other dishes made with various other kinds of ground nuts). The meat/part required for this dish is so specific that it is hard to imagine it originally made for any other meat except beef. Somewhere deep inside me, however, there is a suspicion that this specification of oxtail owes something to the gastronomic enjoyment of oxtail (rabo de toro, rabo de buey) which came to us as a legacy of the Spaniards.

Back to another point in Gonzo’s post:

Re: rapid urbanization etc

That is simply not true. Go to any Thai or Vietnamese home even here in the US and you will find the mortar and pestle used on a daily basis-to make nam prik (a kind of salsa), to pound green papaya, even just to mash garlic cloves/spices. We are the only Southeast Asians to have embraced the blender/food processor on a large-scale basis.

Richard
Opplicario@aol.com

P.S. I would appreciate it if someone could forward me the location of the previous kare-kare discussion on marketmanila.com Still can’t find it.

By: RST

RST — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:03:40 +0000

Hi Gonzo,

I am in Chicago//is the Reggie Aspiras column online? I would be grateful if anyone could point out the discussion of the origins of kare-kare on this board-I did a little searching and cannot find it. I am very interested in this topic. I also saw Apicio’s comment in the other post on kare-kare (the one that follows this one) and would like to point out that beef is in fact eaten in southern India (Tamil Nadu, the Malabar coast etc) where there are large non-Hindu communities (Muslims, “Syrian” Christians, Buddhists in Sri Lanka etc). South India, which had a strong culinary impact on southern Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia etc) seems to be the origin of a number of our dishes as well as various food words (puttuh, to start).

Richard
Opplicario@aol.com

By: Jocelyn Woensdregt

Jocelyn Woensdregt — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 13:41:14 +0000

My best comment is YUMMY and YumYum. I can be in a 9 cloud just having a portion honestly it’s never enough. i eat it with GUSTO.
To all who labor for the dish MORE POWER.