Cover Flavours of My Youth Margarita Forés by Paco Guerrero
Flavours of My Youth Margarita Forés by Paco Guerrero
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From digging into caramelised spam with buttered rice for breakfast to her first-ever taste of taba ng talangka, these are some of chef Margarita Forés’ most treasured childhood food memories
Few names resonate as powerfully through the Philippine culinary scene as Margarita Forés. Recognised by Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants award group as Asia’s Best Female Chef 2016, Forés is the revered chef and restaurateur at the heart of Cibo, Grace Park Dining, The Loggia at Palacio de Memoria, and Lusso, as well as her premier catering service, Cibo di Marghi.
While her undying infatuation with Italian cuisine translates famously across every plate, her devotion to promoting Filipino produce, local artisans, and heritage recipes truly sets her apart as one of the nation’s most essential culinarians. Whether it’s by incorporating diwal into her luxurious pasta dishes, introducing her audience to regional delicacies across the country, or showcasing our cuisines overseas, Forés continuously proves to be one of our greatest food advocates.
Spoiled with delicious Filipino comfort food and early exposure to local and international gastronomic riches, her peerless culinary prowess feels almost kismet. Get to know the inimitable chef Margarita Forés and the flavours of her youth below:
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What was your go-to food growing up?
I fell in love with pasta as a young girl and enjoyed it growing up, simply with butter and parmesan cheese. I would marvel at all the different pasta shapes in boxes that I would see at the supermarket while grocery shopping with our nanny.
What was the first dish you learned how to cook?
The first two dishes that I cooked in my teens came from an American cookbook. My sour cream paprika chicken, lightly floured, coated with paprika, then soaked and baked in butter… the drippings were blended with sour cream and bathed over the chicken. On the side, I made a mushroom rice pilaf with butter and parsley. I still serve this mushroom pilaf in all our 17 Cibo branches and at catering events, and I served the sour cream paprika chicken at my old Filipino diner concept, Café Bola. We still serve it today at The Loggia at Palacio de Memoria.
One of the other dishes I cooked first was actually a sauce. I loved béarnaise sauce so much with steak; after many room service steak and béarnaise sauce meals at The Peninsula hotel in Hong Kong on trips with the family, so I tried to make it on my own.
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What is one dish or ingredient that you couldn’t stomach growing up, but can’t get enough of now?
Lengua estofado or braised ox tongue, were staples on menus of both of my grandmothers: my maternal lola, Wawa Ester Araneta, and my paternal lola, Wawa Angela Geronimo Forés. I never appreciated tongue as a young child then, but love it now when young chefs here and abroad, put it in sandwiches.
What is one dish or ingredient that you couldn’t stomach growing up, and still can’t?
Trips to Hong Kong with family brought me to amazing Cantonese restaurants where abalone and sea cucumber were absolute special musts on their lauriat menus. I couldn’t stomach them before, and avoid them till today.
What would you say is the one dish that ignited your gastronomic awakening?
My father used to take me and my siblings to a Filipino restaurant near our home in Quezon City called Rudy’s Country Chef, owned by a Kapampangan restauranteur Rudy Siojo. I tasted sizzling cow udders or cow breasts, “sinuso ng baka”, and baby crab fat or “taba ng talangka” for the first time. Enjoying these two ingredients together with garlic rice brought me to food heaven. This combination changed my life forever and made me realise how incredibly delicious our Filipino ingredients are.
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What is one snack, dish, or dessert you used to have all the time, but haven’t had in a long time?
The old-fashioned Bacolod-style okoy—made from dripping shrimp batter into boiling hot oil, and gathering the crumbs nearly by hand, made by artisan cooks who formed them into round patties—are but a memory. They were topped with dried hibe or “baby shrimps”, simply wrapped in wax paper and were always on every celebratory buffet table at our Bahay na Puti home, growing up. They were shipped by boat from Bacolod and sadly, only one family of artisans is left making it in Bacolod. How I wish they could share the recipe and the skill needed to make them so we can document this very rare heritage version of okoy to last forever.
What is one snack, dish, or dessert that you used to have all the time, and still enjoy to this day?
The canonigo with natilla from my mother’s home cook, Vicky, is an iconic staple on our dessert table. Vicky learned from our oldest cooks, Isidro and Elena, who even travelled with us to New York in the 1970s when we moved there in political self-exile. We still enjoy this dessert to this day, and when I am lucky, I can get Vicky to make it for me for some special catering events.
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What is your favourite food memory from your childhood? What makes it so special?
I actually have two very special food memories from my childhood. Both of them come from my earliest summers in Bacolod, Negros Occidental, my home province. The first is chomping on the sweetest sugarcane grown on my grandparents’ sugar plantations and sugar mills.
The second is learning how to cook rice in a palayok or “kulon-kulon” over firewood, with my nanny Gerarda, under our ancestral hacienda home in Murcia. The aroma of the rice cooking and the taste of the sweetness of the sugarcane will be forever etched in my memory.
What is a childhood breakfast you loved?
I have two childhood breakfasts that move me, and I can’t just choose one. The first is our Bahay na Puti caramelised spam, pan-roasted in butter and sugar, served with buttered rice and a fried sunny-side up or scrambled egg, invented in my mother’s kitchen on the second floor of our Cubao home.
The second is my father, Raul, or Pappy’s invention, a corned beef fried rice sinangag topped with a fried egg, with ketchup on the side. When I think of these two dishes, my youth just flashes before me.
What is a childhood after-school merienda you loved?
Childhood merienda memories, coming back from school, consisted of many things… from Laura Scudder’s cheese puffs and Pik-Nik potato shoestring chips, to empanada kaliskis done the Ilonggo way, and panara, the Illonggo empanada made with an atswete rice crust, ground pork, shrimp and beansprouts. These were always ready when we got home from school, and were perfect snacks while watching TV shows like I Dream of Jeannie, Get Smart, and even Oras ng Ligaya! TV time became even more enjoyable because of all these yummies.
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About
Lauren’s love for food came much later in life than one would expect— an obsession awakened in the streets of Melbourne’s multicultural dining scene. Armed with this newfound passion, she returned to the Philippines determined to discover the best eats in her home country, with a personal advocacy to champion local cuisines and homegrown talent. Nothing is off-limits; if it’s delicious, it’s worth celebrating.
Work
As Tatler Dining associate editor, Lauren covers all things food and drink, from listing the latest openings in our monthly Dining Radar to interviewing chefs and bartenders about the biggest obstacles crippling the industry today. Beyond the digital space, she also organises Tatler Dining’s tentpole events, including Off Menu and Tatler Dining Kitchen, as well as the annual Tatler Best Philippines awards night and guide launch, detailing the best restaurants in the country.
For leads and event invites, contact her via lauren@tatlerphilippines.com or follow her on Instagram at @laurengolangco.
Photo: Ralph Mendo
