BusinessWorld
May 6, 2021 | 12:05 am
By
(Second Prize winner of the 2020 Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award)
OF THE FLAVORS that the human tongue can detect â salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and savory (
umami), bitter is the least acceptable and provokes the most aversion. From an evolutionary perspective, rightly so, as many bitter substances are toxic, and humans are programmed to avoid them.
And yet strangely, bitterness characterizes the well-loved dishes of regional cuisines: Pinapaitan (soup of beef or goat innards),
Kilawen (raw or half-cooked beef or goat in vinegar), and Kappukan (boiled innards of goat with vinegar) of the Ilocos, and
Kinigtot (a stew of goat meat and innards simmered in spices and bile juice) and
BusinessWorld
April 29, 2021 | 12:02 am
Kaye Leah Cacho-Sitchon won first prize for her essay
Sinanglaw for Breakfast. Second and third prizes went to Jeanne Rebollido Jacob-Ashkenazi for
Bile. More Than Just an Unlikely Condiment and
Welcoming the Goat to Our Tables, respectively.
There were three honorable mention awardees. Wilson Lee Flores wrote about his mother in
A Literature Teacher’s ‘Magical’ Kitchenette. Rosy Mina won for
Are You What You Eat? and Shulamite Maiden Pormentira won for
The Bitter, the Better.
The DGF Award is now in its 19
th year. Named after the late dean of food writers, Doreen Gamboa Fernandez, it was founded to encourage writers to contribute to Philippine food literature. The winning essays of the first 15 years have been published in two books