Or seeing promise in the vaguely familiar.
He doesn’t know it, but Felix speaks mostly in that register, and the stories he tells are hopeful, but his point is always to do something about that promise and make permanent the perishable. They’re all calls to preservation, clear and simple.
The list Felix tells me about is a product of constant research and categorization. Reading books and spending hours on the internet, talking to fisherfolk and wet market vendors, after which the listed items are grouped according to their specific category. “There’s edible fungi, aquatic ingredients, native fruits, cultivars. And then I list down the localities, the seasonality.” But how exactly does he get a hold of these ingredients? “Either online or I go to wherever they’re located. There are ingredients kasi that need to be verified. For example, tawilis. Hindi ka puwede pumunta lang sa market and say na ‘o this is tawilis, the only freshwater sardine in the world.’ For that, I went to Taal Lake.”
After acquiring the ingredients, he photographs them and then composes a caption, which, after reading enough of them a careful reader might appreciate their unusual succinctness—there’s the scientific name (if the ingredient is a species), how it tastes, when and where the ingredient can be found, and how it can be used. No more, no less.
Or seeing promise in the vaguely familiar.
He doesn’t know it, but Felix speaks mostly in that register, and the stories he tells are hopeful, but his point is always to do something about that promise and make permanent the perishable. They’re all calls to preservation, clear and simple.
“In my hometown, may mga edible weeds and fruits sa mga kalsada, sa tabi-tabi. You have to explore, kasi hindi mo talaga sila makikita. ‘Yung mga unang ingredients na nakita ko, kalumpit, sabidukong, tsaka bagbagkong. ‘Yung sabidukong at bagbagkong, mga edible flowers na puwede ihalo sa vegetable dishes, puwede din gawing torta. ‘Yung kalumpit [naman], it’s a very high tree na ‘yung fruit pwedeng gawing jam or gamitin sa pastries. Hinahalo ko din minsan sa beverages. Sa Batangas, there’s someone na gumagawa ng kalumpit cheesecake. Imagine, meron pala tayong fruit na puwedeng mag-compete sa blueberry,” Felix says, adding that besides talking to local market vendors and cooks, it also soon became important for him to talk to fellow food heritage advocates who are driven by the same desire to preserve these ingredients through documentation and maybe more critically, through constant use. On his list of inspirations are Toyo Eatery, the photographer Joel Sartore, and the writer Edgie Polistico.
To position yourself this way in a public space whether consciously or otherwise is a pressure that sometimes gets to Felix, yet it’s clear to him that the lack of readily accessible information about these rare ingredients will only feed the existing communication gap between mainstream food media and the average Filipino. “That guy who said na wala tayo masyadong ingredients unlike other countries, he represents maybe thousands of Filipinos who have been [made to believe] that our country is not blessed with natural resources. I don’t want to say that Filipinos are ignorant…may communication gap lang talaga. ‘Yun ‘yung gusto kong punan through Lokalpedia.”
It’s a spice that we have always believed to be characteristically foreign—the way that we consider apples to be foreign and therefore an import in every sense of the word and therefore superior to our own produce. With Felix’s discovery of Philippine cinnamon was a story many of us probably last heard in high school history classes: “There are tribes like the Manobo na ginagamit siya dati pa, but our colonizers collected thousands of kilos of cinnamon from the Philippines then pinadala sa hari ng Spain.”
at Escolta.
Whatever happens, there’s good that’s been done: Felix’s growing photo collection can mean at least one or two home cooks using an ingredient they’ve never used before, a retired salt maker returning to their craft, more curious, conscientious eaters, an amateur home cook turning to advocacy. ●
Creative direction by Nimu Muallam
Art direction by Levenspeil Sangalang
Produced by Pauline Miranda
Special thanks to Sassa Gurl
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