Filipino cuisine

With over 7,500 islands, Filipino cuisine is a mish-mash of hundreds of local, regional, and ethnic cuisines that defies easy generalizations. The Spanish colonial era brought Spanish influences like stews cooked with vinegar, giving rise to the national dish adobo, and spit roasting a whole pig until the skin was crispy giving rise to lechón, as well as Mexican ingredients like as corn and tomato. Chinese immigrants brought over pancit noodles and lumpia spring rolls, while the American occupation introduced the Philippines to the joys of ice cream, hamburgers, fried chicken, spaghetti and Spam.

Celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme once described the Philippines as "the islands that spice forgot", a controversial but not entirely inaccurate claim. Filipino cooking is indeed likely the least spicy of all Southeast Asian cuisines, in both senses of the word: chili peppers are largely absent from Filipino cuisine (with the notable exceptions of the Bicol region and parts of Mindanao near Malaysia), and so are the herbs and spices that feature so heavily elsewhere in the region. Instead, Filipino meals strive for a balance of sweet (tamis), sour (asim), and salty (alat), relying more on garlic, onions and ginger to add flavor to dishes, as well as fish sauce and shrimp paste to add a dose of umami. Main dishes tend to have a single predominant flavor and are paired for balance, often in ways visitors find surprising: for example, sweet champorado cocoa porridge with salty tuyo dried fish, or savory dinuguan pork blood stew with sweet puto steamed rice cakes. Painstaking preparation and prolonged cooking time is also a characteristic of most Filipino dishes, and when done properly is often what brings out the flavor of the food.