Cooking with Fire in Mt. Firis

A Teduray woman boils native coffee in a stove carved out of a rock in her makeshift kitchen in Mt. Firis, Maguindanao.

Anthropologist and ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss pointed out that cooking is a human activity with which culture begins. And no one upholds this fact better than the indigenous peoples who continue to preserve their culture in the midst of the dynamic changes in our present society. 

Taro stalks are boiled for a ginataang gabi or taro with coconut milk dish.

And so my journey takes me to the foot of the sacred mountain of Firis where for the Teduray, Lambangian and Dulangan Manobo indigenous peoples living there, cooking is more than just a day-to-day activity. It is a culture.

We arrived in the community greeted by the billowing smoke from the cooking pits. The men and women were preparing for a welcome feast. The children were removing the chaff of the green monggo or beans. The women were peeling the gabi or taro and cutting its stalks. I could hear the pounding of the spices and smell the rare aroma of the upland rice and native as they were boiled and brewed over the fire. 

This was what cooking truly meant: bringing people together for a shared meal where as author Michael Pollan in his book "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation" we "learn the art of conversation and acquire the habits of civilization: sharing, listening, taking turns, navigating differences, arguing without offending".

Pots of upland rice are suspended in tree branches
over a pit of fire.

And as I shared the cooked meal with the indigenous peoples of Mt. Firis, I reflected on how this culture of cooking has been changed by the venture of capitalism.

Coming from an urban area, I have been used to cooking with the modern cooking appliances where fire is produced by gas or electricity. Though these made cooking food easier but it also made us dependent on the availability of gas and electricity and made us vulnerable to the soaring prices of these "commodities".

I remembered the time when I watched my mother mount pieces of fallen branches of trees and cut wood over lukay or dried coconut branches and leaves and flick a match under the pile. The magic of the first flicker of fire and the aroma of the burning wood had always lured me to our kitchen. And that's where my mother taught me to cook meals for the family in the traditional way. 

Lenumad, a sticky brown upland rice in bamboo
cooked traditionally with fire.

No amount of instant, "microwaveable", fast and "ready-to-eat-on-the-go" meals could ever come close to that.