Ilocano Authentic Dishes ~ Gan on Travel

Local Ilocano food is simple, unpretentious and savory. They use ingredients that are abundant in their surroundings and they keep their food simple. In fact Ilocano cuisine is most reflective of the four foundation cooking methods of Filipino cuisine. These methods are boiling, grilling, roasting, and steaming. These were the basic cooking methods of our ancestors before the foreign influences on our food.

Ilocano cuisine for me is very exotic and at the same time it is the most intriguing of all the regional cuisines in the Philippines. I say intriguing for the following reasons:
1. The dishes have very funny sounding names because of the native dialect spoken.
2. The ingredients used like intestines, bile, lots of liver, tripe, kidneys, crickets, cow’s skin, ant eggs, dog, maybe a bit too exotic for the regular palette.
3. Most dishes are soupy instead of saucy. They hardly use thickening agents like rice flour, flour, or roux. Food is difficult to plate or present nicely.

4. They use a lot of local leafy vegetables, vegetable blossoms, and if not handled properly can easily be overcooked.
5. Some of the dishes can even look disgusting but when you try them…they can taste so delicious!
6. They have cooking techniques from their ancestors that they are not telling us. When the execution of their dish is prepared by a native…. even something as dis-likable as liver can taste so heavenly! Some text are taken from Cooking Class