The History of Pancit in the Philippines

One of the most iconic dishes of Filipino cuisine is a noodle dish called pensit, and there are many, many ways of making this dish but I've decided to look back at a recipe from 1919 to see just one of the ways that it was eaten a hundred years ago. So thank you to Babbel for sponsoring this video as we make some old-fashioned Filipino pensit, this time on Tasting History. So there is no one way to make this dish. There are dozens and dozens of variations They can have different types of meat from pork to seafood. They can have different types of noodles. Some are more like a noodle soup while others are more like a stir-fried plate of noodles and that is the type that is mentioned in a textbook for girls in the public intermediate schools of the Philippines which was published in Manila in 1919. It gives a list of ingredients and then says cut the bean cake in small pieces, peel the shrimps, pound the shells in a mortar, strain the juice, and save it. Cook the pork, add the bean cake, sauté the shrimps. When cooked remove them and the bean cake from the karahay. Fry the onion and the garlic, remove from the karahay. Put the pork, the shrimps, and the bean cake in the karahay, add the patis, cook a few minutes. Soak the bihon in water for minutes, wash the miki, add the miki and the bihon to the mixture in the karahay. Add the shrimp liquor, cover and cook slowly 10 minutes, serve with fried garlic and with slices of boiled egg. Cut the calamansis in halves and serve with pancit. Now this recipe was written in English but there were several recipes from this period that were written in Spanish that I wanted to get translated to fill in some of the gaps in the cooking process. Now I couldn't translate them completely on my own but I did at least recognize a few words from my Spanish lessons that I've taken with today's sponsor Babbel. Though actually I'm not taking Spanish right now I am taking Italian because when this video comes out I will be in Italy. Babbel is a great way to brush up on a new language when you are getting ready to travel to another country, and they have specific lessons geared toward travel. Quando comincia la visita guidata, fare la fila. That means to stand in line and since I'm going to Rome in the jubilee year I'm going to guess I'm going to be using that phrase a lot. But Babbel isn't just for travel it's also wonderful for learning a new language for business, or if you want to talk to a family member who speaks another language, or for what I think is the best reason to do anything just for self-improvement, to learn something new. Learning a new language is really good for the gray matter. With their assortment of short 10-minute lessons, games, podcasts, and live online classes Babbel is a great way to learn a new language no matter how you like to learn. So to start speaking a new language in as little as three weeks just click my link in the description or scan this QR code and you will get 60% off of your subscription. Link is in the description, and now back to the noodles. So this recipe actually uses two types of noodles. Miki which are thick egg noodles, and bihon which are rice noodles usually sold dried, and it calls for 125 grams of each. Then 125 grams of pork. It does not specify a cut but many of the recipes from this time do talk about pork belly so that's what I'm using. Then either 25 small shrimp or 15 large shrimp, about a half head of minced garlic, one tablespoon of chopped kimchi. This is the greens of Chinese celery but if you can't find Chinese celery the greens of regular celery will work or some parsley. A half an onion diced, and some firm tofu. In Tagalog one of the languages of the Philippines this type of firm tofu is called tokwa, but the recipe just says a cake of it. She calls it bean cake actually but in other recipes they do call it tokwa. She just says one cake. I don't know how big a cake was so I just took about the same amount as I had for the pork. Then one tablespoon of patis. This is a fish sauce similar to the ancient Roman garum which I've made here on the channel a couple times, and it adds this kind of salty umaminess and it is very, very common in Filipino cuisine. Then one hard-boiled egg, and six calamansi. These are small sour citrus that are grown in the Philippines. Sometimes you'll get them and they're still green but then when they ripen up they become this vibrant orange, and they are quite sour. They're actually more related to the kumquat than anything but if you can't find them, they are hard to find, then you can just use a lime in a pinch. Now the main cooking tool for this recipe is the karahay which is a type of wok, and the bigger the better. They make these things absolutely huge. Obviously I don't have that. I have a fairly small one but the bigger the better but a small one will work. You can actually also just use a nice big pan. So first we need to peel and clean the shrimp. So twist off the heads and discard them, and then peel away the shell and pull off the tail, and you need to set the tails and the shells aside because we're still going to use those. Once the shrimp is shelled slice a shallow incision down the back and pull out the dark vein which is actually the digestive tract of the shrimp. You don't want to eat that. Then once they're all clean put those in the refrigerator and gather up your shells. Now the original recipe says to pound the shells in a mortar, and then strain the liquid but I did that and no liquid was to be had, but then I realized it actually wants me to make a sort of broth from this. It doesn't explain it very well but again I looked at those old recipes. This is what it wants and in the list of ingredients it does say to use three quarters of a cup of water but it never says what to do with it. This is what we're doing with it. So add the water and the shells to a small saucepan and bring it to a simmer. Mash the shells down every minute or so as you simmer for about 10 minutes, and then pass that through a strainer, and that I'm pretty sure is what the recipe refers to as shrimp liquor which in 1919 I feel sounds like a little jab. Hey you shrimp licker. Once you have this made slice the tofu and the pork into small pieces, and then add some oil or more traditionally at the time lard to the wok and heat it up. Once the oil is hot add in the pork and stir it around as it cooks. It should be on high heat so it gets some nice good color in just a minute or two. Then add in the tofu and do the same. Then you can add the shrimp but only if you have a big wok. Mine is fairly small and I don't want it to get overcrowded so I took the pork and the tofu out and then I added the shrimp and let them cook for a couple minutes until they had some nice color on them. Once the shrimp is cooked then you do want to remove that and add in the onions and the garlic, stirring them in the oil and cooking still on high heat until they're all nice and browned. Should be quick though just a minute or two. Then turn the heat down to medium and add back in the shrimp, tofu, and pork along with the kinchai or celery leaf. Then mix everything so nothing is sticking to the bottom of the wok, and then add in the patis. Let this all cook together over medium heat for a few minutes. While it cooks soak the dried bihon noodles in cold water for four minutes, and if the miki noodles are dry then you want to soak them too. I found fresh and that is what the recipe talks about. Once they've soaked add them both to the wok. Again if you have a really big one then you add everything in and you're good to go. I couldn't do that so I added in about half of one of the noodles, let it cook for a moment so it kind of cooked down, and then added in more until I could get everything in there. Once all of the noodles are added pour in the shrimp liquor. Give everything a good toss so everything is coated, and then cover the wok with a lid and lower the heat and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Now this dish pancit is decidedly Filipino. It is part of Filipino cuisine but its origins actually come with people who came to the Philippines. Like many of the dishes in Filipino cuisine this one specifically came with the Chinese. The Chinese had been visiting the Philippines since at least the 9th century and were immigrating there in numbers by the 15th century. There was already a large population mostly from the Canton region in and around Manila when the Spanish arrived and conquered the city in 1570. Now it didn't take very long before the relatively few Spanish colonists began to feel uneasy about this much larger Chinese population so they decided to confine them to an area known as the Parayan. This was surrounded by walls where the population could be locked in at night. This was followed by another Chinatown called Binondo which was originally meant for Chinese Catholics and it is still the Chinatown in Manila today. Both of these areas are where the first mentions of pancit come from namely because they were home to many restaurants that sold pancit called panciteria. Now of course people could make their own pancit at home but at this time and really for the next few centuries most people seem to get their noodles at a panciteria. There's a document, a Spanish document from 1847 that talks about the native population of the Philippines going to these restaurants and eating this dish. It says among the many stews that the natives eat and that the Chinese generally sell is the one they call pancit made with rice and wheat paste in the form of thick noodles and stewed with minced pork and various gulay, a species of bean from the country, and sold to customers at three quarters of a coin. It also says that while the natives of the because when they eat pancit they use a type of stick called sipit with which they can carry the food to their mouths. The Chinese always eat with these sticks and they handle them with great skill. Sipit is of course the Tagalog word for chopsticks or tongs or tweezers or really anything that kind of pinches but in this case he's talking about chopsticks and I find it really interesting that Europe and China had been trading for thousands of years at this point and yet so many people in the mid and late 19th century in Europe had no concept of what chopsticks were. I think that's so interesting. In 1875 a European visitor went to the Philippines and ate at a panciteria and just marveled at these tools that he was given to eat his food with. In place of a fork are two cylinders five to eight inches long made of ebony or wood. To use these sticks arrange one between your index finger and middle finger. In my opinion this invention was adopted for hygiene and with the object of not over indulging since it is obligatory to eat small portions at a time. And it's interesting that he mentions hygiene because many of the writers of this period questioned the hygiene not of the chopstick but of the panciteria itself. The Chinese eating houses are known there by the name of panciteria. On the two occasions that I have visited such filthy taverns I could not overcome the repugnance of the smell and appearance of the various mince meats. They served them in an infinity of porcelain or china dishes suitable for placing cups of chocolate on them. They placed them on the table or the floor all at the same time in the number of 8, 12 or more depending on the price of the place setting. But the questionable hygiene of these establishments did not seem to deter people from actually going to them because the food was so good that it outweighed any minor health code violations that you might witness. In 1906 the world traveler George Amos Miller visited Manila and wrote about his experience and he talks about the fact that there are many fine dining restaurants available but when you go to one of them you'll be approached by a man pompous enough to be the Lord Mayor and with dignified condescension he says, what can I do for you? I always feel like suggesting that he begin by deflating himself. Instead he recommends that you get over the need for a white glove service and head to the Chinatown of Binondo. There the whole street is devoted to chino restaurants which are well patronized and the visit is warranted to relieve hunger whether the food is eaten or not. The stoves are just inside the door. Large pots of different mixtures are stewing away and on the counter by the stove are placed a half dozen large and small pots containing various compositions of different color and consistency. A banana leaf serves as a marble slab. He does admit that they are not the most fastidious establishments but he said that the food in the company is so good it just doesn't really matter, you forget about it. But that's not to say that the pancitria stayed like this. Many of them adapted over the years and the decades to keep up with the service standards of Manila's other restaurants. One of the oldest pancitria in Manila today actually opened in 1866 and it was called Pancitria Antigua. Today it is called Tojo Antigua and it's on the same location and supposedly they are serving the same foods that they have served for over 150 years. Well this restaurant as soon as it opened became very, very popular with all walks of society and one reason that it remained popular was probably because of an ad that they put out in 1931. It boasted that we have become known as the most sanitary pancitria in the city. Then they go on to list why that is. Things like sanitizing the silverware, replacing table linens between guests, refrigerating their food, and preparing it in a sanitary manner. We do all these at great expense in order to eliminate all possible chance of infection to our patrons. Therefore our patrons are safe to dine with us. We like to take all of these things for granted now when we go to a restaurant but having worked in the restaurant industry in New York back in the in the 2000s I can promise you that that is not always the case so good on them for boasting about it. Anyway I think that my favorite mention of a pancitria from a historical document actually comes from a novel written by one of the national heroes of the Philippines and proponent of Filipino independence Jose Rizal. In his 1891 novel El filibusterismo there is a group of students who are intent on opening a language school to better educate the poor Filipino population but the Spanish government and the church are hesitant to let this happen. Finally they do agree to open a school but they don't want any of the teaching done by the native Filipinos, they want it done by the Dominican friars. Well the students decide that this is better than nothing so to celebrate their partial victory they start discussing places to go have a party and one of the more pessimistic students chimes in saying no gentlemen observed Pescon with his clownish grin to celebrate the event there's nothing like a banquet in a pancitria served by the Chinese men without camisas. I insist without camisas. The sarcasm and grotesqueness of this idea won it ready acceptance Sandoval being the first to applaud it for he had long wished to see the interior of one of those establishments which at night appeared to be so merry and cheerful. Camisas were the shirts, the long shirts that the Chinese wore at the time so essentially it's saying that the people who serve the food are shirtless so going back to that idea of maybe not having the same standards as the nicer restaurants of the city and the book actually deals a lot with the social dynamics of the Spanish versus the native Filipinos versus the Chinese. Each group kind of looking down on the other and it's very, very interesting. It's obviously way too complex to go into here but I just think that it's really interesting that José Rizal uses pancit and the pancitria to kind of display some of that social dynamic. The students who are mostly native Filipino though one of them is Spanish look down on this Chinese restaurant yet are fascinated with it and really want to go and try the food and when the food comes one of the native students Macreg talks about this food that's being served. Gentlemen the pancit langlang is the soup par excellence. As you will observe Sandoval it is composed of rice noodles, crabs, or shrimps, beaten eggs, scraps of chicken, and I don't know what else. It's pancit langlang that is Chinese pancit to distinguish it from that which is peculiar to this country. Until recently gentlemen the pancit was believed to be Chinese or Japanese but the fact is that being unknown in China or Japan it would seem to be Filipino. Let us then dedicate the pancit to the country and to the government. When you read this in the context of the novel though it is not as patriotic as it might sound because the government at the time was not Filipino it was Spanish, and the book is really all about how the Spanish were kind of reaping the rewards of the Philippines and of the Filipino people. Now obviously we don't have time to get into all of that. It is an incredibly complicated story but it's a fascinating period of history that is not covered much definitely in American schools especially because we get involved. It is not our finest hour but it is a fascinating period and so I am going to put a couple links in the description to some videos that really cover the topic very well as well as specifically Jose Rizal. Now to this day the pancitaria is going strong in Manila. They're all over their place. They're very, very popular. Unfortunately the pancitaria that Rizal mentions in his book, and it was a real establishment. It was called Pancitaria Macanista de Buengusto. It is abandoned and it's very sad but other locations from that period do survive. Now I have never been to a pancitaria but I have had it made at home and I think that that's probably the best version. Today in the Philippines or in the Filipino community large plates of pancit are still made today for celebrations, and birthdays, and around the new year. It's often eaten for good luck and long life. Another tradition brought by the Chinese just like the dish itself but it is not my birthday, nor is it the new year so I'm just eating my pancit because it smells really good. So as soon as your pancit has simmered for 10 minutes dish it up and serve it with the sliced hard-boiled egg and calamansi, and here we are a 100 year old recipe for Filipino pancit. The noodles are kind of stuck together so it's hard to get it all but I'm going to try. Here we go. I love noodles but I hate eating them on camera. It's just there is no delicate way to do so. I need to go back to Miss Manners. Anyway the flavor is so wonderful. It has that seafood-ness to it but it's so much more complex. So I had a big old piece of shrimp so obviously that's one of main flavors for me but that shrimp liquor and the patis it just adds such a complicated flavor to it. It's almost, it's almost earthy and sweet at the same time. It's kind of the way that I would describe that flavor. What I really like about it though are just the noodles themselves. I mean they're noodles but it's the texture. Now I have only ever had pancit where it is just the bihon which are the very thin rice noodles. I find that that is probably more common at least in the circles I run in and I like that texture. It's really nice. The miki sometimes other like canton noodles they are just thicker. They're more like Chinese noodles whereas these I feel are specific to pancit. They're not but I feel like they are. Also I really want to try one of these calamansi. Yeah, it tastes like a kumquat which I don't like. I don't like sour things. It is quite sour. It really does not taste like a lime. You almost have to like take a lime and an orange and a tangerine and I'll mash them together and then take away any sweetness and that's what it tastes like. A lot of people really like that flavor. I'm not a fan but the dish itself definitely a fan and it is like one of those just things that you just want to eat a huge plate of so that's what I'm going to do for dinner. Anyway make some pancit, go to a Filipino restaurant, buy some pancit, order some pancit if you don't want to make it, and I will see you next time on Tasting History.