For the Coffee Table Book - Issue #15

Sauté. The aroma of garlic and onions is perhaps the most vivid scent that I remember from my childhood.

Sautéing garlic and onions fills an important role in Philippine cuisines and in the history of Filipino cooking…

Imagine how reliving it may have been for the tired and wounded Katipuneros when Melchora Aquino decided to slaughter and cook her many domestic animals to feed them. Surely, the smell of garlic and onions sizzling in oil would have signaled relief.



Communal cooking characterizes Filipino feasts. In times and in places where catering services were unheard of, cooking is done in the yard. Having been gifted with the time and in a place when this was practiced (and it still is), it was pure delight to walk the streets during fiestas and to smell the aroma of food wafting in the air. It was an olfactory high. Of course, prominent in the scents is the smell of sautéed garlic and onions.



In family celebrations and even in sad times, again in a not so distant time and place, cooking awakened helpful spirits. Neighbors seemed to be duty bound to help. The parade of men and women carrying woks, large cauldrons and ladles was a common sight.  The aroma of sautéed garlic and onions would mean a feeding of the bayanihan spirit.