PASTOLAN VILLAGE, Subic Bay Freeport—The ethnic cuisine of the Ayta tribe appears to be an ode to the mountain and the austere way of life that a wild environment engenders.
Yams and grubs in the earth, crayfish and snails in the river, lizards and boars in the forest, and bees, birds and bats in the sky—these bounties become staple mountain fare that has fed generation upon generation of these indigenous people in the rugged hinterlands.
And even as modernity slowly crept in into the Ayta heartland, sometimes tearing asunder traditions dearest to the old mountain folk, those who remember the ways of the past take it upon themselves to pass on some of the collective tribal wisdom to their forebears.
On the last Saturday of October, as the Ayta tribesmen of Pastolan joined in the final celebration of this year’s Indigenous Peoples Month, this upland village, 15 kilometers from the heart of the Subic Bay Freeport, became the venue for such remembering.
That day, eight groups, armed with the secrets passed on from clan to family, from mother to daughter, and from father to son, prepared food the old Ayta way—ironically in a modern cookfest concocted by Jobin SQM, a business locator in the Subic free-port that is putting up a solar-powered generating facility in the foothills near the Ayta village.
The resulting event was a veritable demonstration of Ayta ingenuity in the culinary arts: From how the wild boar, monitor lizards, fruit bats and labuyo (wild chicken) are slaughtered and prepared for cooking, to how the meat and accompanying herbs are packed into bamboo tubes and cooked over wood fire.
The dishes were downright exotic: Grilled wild chicken stuffed with bilukaw, a grass used as souring agent; wild boar meat in sour soup; river snails and crayfish cooked in coconut milk; bayawak (monitor lizard), as well as bayakan (fruit bat), also in sour soup base and cooked with green papaya in bamboo.
There were also powdery white grubs, which turn crispy on the outside andsucculent on the inside when cooked lightly over embers.
For just desserts, the womenfolk prepared boiled banana and cassava, and a pandan-tanglad combination juice drink laced with natural mountain honey.
The judges, who were invited over to rate the cookfest entries, were unanimous in their verdict that the native cuisine was simply extraordinary.
“This is a revelation,” said Amethya de la Llana, manager of the SBMA Ecology Center, who was among the judges. “I never knew that we could cook this way and make it so flavorful, too! I mean, they’re not using vinegar or soy sauce, not even onion and garlic. It’s really amazing.”
Of course, the secret behind the distinctive flavor of Ayta cuisine is the ingredients that go into each dish, said Marietta Pabayan, a Pastolan council member whose group was acknowledged the best during the cookfest for their rendition of the sinigang na bayawak.
“The dishes are simply prepared,” Marietta affirmed, “but the native herbs provide a flavor you won’t taste elsewhere.” To make the sinigang, for example, the natives use alibangbang leaves, which just give a hint of sour taste to tickle the taste buds.
Ayta elders said some of the tribal food favorites are really hard to get, like the kated grubs, which are dug from among the roots of the akleng parang tree, and the buloy, a root crop that is often cooked in gata or coconut milk.
“The buloy is a very special dish for the Aytas because you have to dig sometimes up to 5 feet deep in the forest before you can find it,” Kap Bonifacio Tolentino said. “Also, it takes one full cycle of rains and dry weather before it can be harvested.”
Tolentino said for this cookfest, the Ayta tribesmen had to scour the forest just to come up with the ingredients used in traditional tribal cooking.
“It is not often we cook these things these days, simply because we can easily get food from the market,” Tolentino said. This was the same Ayta elder who, reacting to a news report in 2011 that Subic fruit bats are being hunted by tribesmen to extinction, said: “Why do we have to hunt fruit bats when we have Jollibee?”
Still, the cookfest was an effective exercise in tribal education, said Pastolan tribal chief Conrado Frenilla, who reminded the tribal youngsters to watch closely how the cooking was done.
“We fear that our children may no longer follow the practices of the tribe because of the overwhelming influences of modern culture,” Frenilla said. “And so we thank the organizers of this event for helping us revive our traditions and, in the process, teach our children these important aspects of Ayta life.”
As the first Ayta cookfest was deemed “a huge success,” de la Llana said the sponsors are planning to make it an annual event. Indeed, the learning experience—and the extraordinarily delicious mountain fare—will surely be something to look forward to for both the tribesmen and the visiting lowlanders.