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Rin Chupeco Books

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The Bone Witch

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“Dinner that night is a feast of flavor. To celebrate the successful exorcism, Kagura has cooked several more dishes than the shrine's usual, simple fare- fragrant onigiri, balls of rice soaked in green tea, with umeboshi- salty and pickled plums- as filling. There is eggplant simmered in clear soup, green beans in sesame sause, and burdock in sweet-and-sour dressing. The mood is festive.”

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Book:The Girl from the Well
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“Fifteen is an appropriate age to test for seasoning. It is not a complicated ritual, but it is an unusual rite of passage and not for the fastidious. It's a prick of a finger. It's five drops of blood. It's drizzling the blood onto sinigang- a heady soup of tamarind broth, with a savory sourness enhanced by spinach and okra, tomatoes and corms, green peppers for zest. Lola Simeon prefers stewed pork, and so that was chopped into the broth, a perfect medley of lean meat and fat.”

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Book:Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love
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“It's not like you ate Filipino food all the time. You loved Emperor's Way takeout, and the friendly Chinese girl there who you were too shy to ask but whose name tag said to call her Ming always gave you extra sauce for your orange chicken. The sweet potato pie from Butter was absolutely to die for, and it made you feel soft and warm the same way Lola's leche flan did. The youngest Manzano once handed you a delicious pastry without prompting or demanding payment before drifting away, seemingly lost in a world of her own. If this was a marketing strategy for their pastelería, it worked. But you could tell that there were differences in the way they cooked and baked, that they took old and treasured recipes and put in their own unique, modern spin to them. Why couldn't you do the same?”

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Book:Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love
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“It was Lola Simeona who served their bestseller: Soup No. 5 was a horrifying concoction of bull testes and spices, yet still was the best broth this side of the city, a popular meal for the adventurous and for those who prize umami above all. Occasionally a new customer would stagger out, pale and green all at once, because Lola Simeona was never shy about telling them exactly what they were eating, and in great detail. If it tasted good, she liked to say, then why would knowing this change anything? Lola sold Soup No. 5 regular at nearly all hours, closing at two a.m., only to begin again at nine the next day. Soup No. 5 regular was a picker-upper, a mood brightener. Soup No. 5 regular put people in cheerful temperaments, ready to face the day with optimism- a surprising side effect, given the cantankerous nature of the chef.”

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Book:Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love
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“You did your best to be a good student. You chopped and cooked and measured and served according to her wishes. But sometimes you wondered if the stall could stand to be upgraded with modern comfort food. With pandan ensaymada instead of the increasingly popular but also growingly common ube, the fresh bread from the oven and the cheese still melting, sweetly fragrant from the infusion of those steeped leaves and as simple as a summer morning. Or chopped watermelons in bulalo soup to replace tomatoes, for that extra tang. Or even pork adobo, but with chili and sweet pineapples. You had so many ideas.”

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Book:Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love
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“But your lolas took offense at being called witches. That is an Amerikano term, they scoff, and that they live in the boroughs of an American city makes no difference to their biases. Mangkukulam was what they styled themselves as, a title still spoken of with fear in their motherland, with its suggestions of strange healing and old-world sorcery. Nobody calls their place along Pepper Street Old Manila, either, save for the women and their frequent customers. It was a carinderia, a simple eatery folded into three food stalls; each manned by a mangkukulam, each offering unusual specialties: Lola Teodora served kare-kare, a healthy medley of eggplant, okra, winged beans, chili peppers, oxtail, and tripe, all simmered in a rich peanut sauce and sprinkled generously with chopped crackling pork rinds. Lola Teodora was made of cumin, and her clients tiptoed into her stall, meek as mice and trembling besides, only to stride out half an hour later bursting at the seams with confidence. But bagoong- the fermented-shrimp sauce served alongside the dish- was the real secret; for every pound of sardines you packed into the glass jars you added over three times that weight in salt and magic. In six months, the collected brine would turn reddish and pungent, the proper scent for courage. unlike the other mangkukulam, Lola Teodora's meal had only one regular serving, no specials. No harm in encouraging a little bravery in everyone, she said, and with her careful preparations it would cause little harm, even if clients ate it all day long. Lola Florabel was made of paprika and sold sisig: garlic, onions, chili peppers, and finely chopped vinegar-marinated pork and chicken liver, all served on a sizzling plate with a fried egg on top and calamansi for garnish. Sisig regular was one of the more popular dishes, though a few had blanched upon learning the meat was made from boiled pigs' cheeks and head.”

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Book:Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love
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“Practice, Ami. There is no talent without practice." And practice you did. You hacked at livers and pig brains for sisig, spent hours over a hot stove for the perfect sourness to sinigang. You dug out intestines and wound them around bamboo sticks for grilled isaw, and monitored egg incubation times to make balut. Lola didn't frequent clean and well-lit farmers markets. Instead, you accompanied her to a Filipino palengke, a makeshift union of vendors who occasionally set up shop near Mandrake Bridge and fled at the first sight of a police uniform. Popular features of such a palengke included slippery floors slicked with unknown ichor; wet, shabby stalls piled high with entrails and meat underneath flickering light bulbs; and enough health code violations to chase away more gentrification in the area. Your grandmother ruled here like some dark sorceress and was treated by the vendors with the reverence of one. You learned how to make the crackled pork strips they called crispy pata, the pickled-sour raw kilawin fish, the perfect full-bodied peanuty sauce for the oxtail in your kare-kare. One day, after you have mastered them all, you will decide on a specialty of your own and conduct your own tests for the worthy. Asaprán witches have too much magic in their blood, and not all their meals are suitable for consumption. Like candy and heartbreak, moderation is key. And after all, recipes are much like spells, aren't they? Instead of eyes of newt and wings of bat they are now a quarter kilo of marrow and a pound of garlic, boiled for hours until the meat melts off their bones. Pots have replaced cauldrons, but the attention to detail remains constant.”

ModerationCuisineFilipinoVendorsExperimentingOffalMangkukulam
Book:Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love
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“Night and day rule from their two thrones, Where the darkest hour and the brightest light meet the Hellmouth shall be crossed by she strengthened under the gift of day, by she liberated with the gift of light. And the world is whole again. But the Cruel Kingdom hungers for a sacrifice. Sacrifice overthrows chaos. Sacrifice is necessary for what was two to become one. Test your worth; offer to her, Inanna’s immortality. She will grieve endlessly for the sister Who slumbers in the house of the dead, but her tears will save us all. And until the Gates of Death and Life interwine, Love continues to be the toll. And she will pay. She will pay.”

ProphecyOdessaThe Never Tilting WorldHaidee
Book:The Never Tilting World
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“A demoness Is what men call A goddess they cannot control. There is no shame In goddesses falling Into the Abyss Where they find new purpose As darkness. Praise the women who fly And fail to succumb to Night; Death sustains Inanna, Who is one and whole, Who sacrifices her life into the below To save her life in the Above Who is the sacrificed and the sacrificer, The demoness and the goddess Rule the heavens And the Cruel Kingdom As two, but One. As the enduring Above, So shall the Great Below.”

ProphecyThe Never Tilting WorldInanna S Song
Book:The Never Tilting World
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“When they approach with lapis lazuli, accept their offer of clarity. When they approach with the blue turban of the open country, accept their offering of courage. When they approach with the twin-egg beads, accept their offering of abundance. When they approach with the lapis brooch, accept their offering of life. When they approach with the jeweled measuring rod, accept their offer of beginnings and endings. When they approach with the sapphire ring, accept their offering of rulership. When they approach with the glittering eyes, accept their offer of a mother’s love. For every gift, a terror. For every radiance, a sacrifice.”

The Never Tilting WorldThe Galla
Book:The Never Tilting World
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