the relationship between gastronomy, creativity and selective memory

"Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making out of it once it is found." -- James Russel Lowell, American Romantic poet

for me, this is such a powerful quote. it's as if it speaks to me and to me only. this sums up what i have been and will always be upholding in my life. to create something entirely my own. be it in my paintings, stories that i write, crafts that i make with my hands, dishes that i prepare, fabric designs that i would like to sew one day (i am currently teaching myself to sew! wish me luck!), etc. i am always pregnant with ideas in my head. sometimes my hands cannot keep up with my thousand and one thoughts. i just love creating!

in cooking, i tend to recreate the dishes that i loved eating back home. dishes that my taste buds are familiar with. dishes that bring back a lot of happy memories. sometimes they turn out to be a hit and sometimes they would be completely crap! so when i get especially homesick, i tend to cook up a storm in the kitchen and try to come up with my own version of homecooked comfort food.

in Iligan (my hometown), there is this quaint little "carenderia" called Quick Cha which IMHO serves the best "pancit canton" (stir fried noodles, with a flavorful Filipino twist) in the whole world and i'm not kidding. it even has its own unique name, the Happy Birthday Pancit (for obvious reasons, of course). it has a lot of ingredients, including strips of bacon and scrambled eggs!

you might be wondering why there isn't a single noodle in sight in this picture. that's because we ran out of noodles! egad! i substituted it with brown rice and came up with a Happy Birthday fried rice instead!

when i was living in Singapore, i was introduced by a friend to "Guiniling" (translation: minced meat), a very simple Tagalog dish involving minced meat, carrots and potatoes. though a Filipino dish, this brings back a lot of warm memories of Singapore. again, i added rice and simple ingredients like tomato sauce and celery to make it into a hearty meal by itself. i topped it with brocolli florets after carefully placing it inside a blanched cabbage leaf for added drama :)

when i was in uni, me and my foodie friends used to frequent this french cafe called The French Baker that served the most delicious Chicken Ala King in the whole of Manila. its a creamy kind of chicken soup with corn or mushroom served inside a hollowed-out bread! i remember we used to eat this when we get our allowance in the first week of every month :) i just substituted the bread with penne pasta and we got ourselves a homerun :)

another favorite Manila resto is Italianni's. they serve the most scrumptious Sicilian salad around. yes, i was young then and easy to please. but who can ever forget mangoes, grapes, toasted pine nuts, crisp lettuce and parmegiano reggiano with Sicilian dressing in one plate!? oh no, not me! as usual, i tweaked the recipe a bit. i added my favorite rocket leaves and instead of plain chicken, i put in some chicken pops :)

soooo. what have you created today? if you want recipes for these dishes, you know what to do :)