2.

I suppose I’ll take a cue from a few good cookbooks and start with a preface.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles.  You might know this about me, I say it a lot.  Hollywood to be exact.  Well, not quite the Hollywood you might be thinking about.  If I could put a name to it I would say that I’m from South Hollywood.  In reality, the neighborhood doesn’t bear that name but I’m from a little pocket of Hollywood that’s a drive away from the star-studded sidewalks and tourist traps.  Not quite Koreatown but just on the cusp. Right alongside the studio district and the expansive mansions of Windsor Square.  I like to think of it as a tiny cross world of the world.

I grew up surrounded by different foods and different cultures.  Every Sunday morning without fail my brother and I would accompany my mom on her grocery errands.  After church, we’d stock up on produce from the local Mexican ranch market. I would marvel at the olla de barro lining the tops of shelves while my mom tore through heaps of corn on the cob.  After that, we might head over to Bangkok Market (or A1 Market in Echo Park if we were up for the drive) to stock up on fresh tilapia, bangus, catfish or whatever was on sale.  My mom would patiently wait for her number to be called for fish cleaning.  Meanwhile, to keep myself amused, I’d grab the closest pair of tongs to poke at the blue crabs.  If the wait was especially long I’d use metal spoons to pour water on the Manila clams and watch them open and close.  When we were expecting company, the go-to place for groceries was Jons’ Grocery because Mom would say the Armenian butcher had the best cuts of ham for lechon and, if we were lucky, we’d grab a lahmanjoon to snack on the way home.

South Hollywood was a global marketplace.  And yet somehow, after crisscrossing markets and locating ingredients, my mom was able to bring a piece of the Philippines to our table each and every day.  My family very rarely ate at restaurants because Mom always made sure to have a homecooked meal ready for us and our eager appetites.  As a result, the most Filipino thing about me is my stomach.

I credit my love for food to watching my mom magically create Filipino dishes from Los Angeles ingredients, watching hours upon hours of PBS cooking shows because all we had was basic TV, and living in arguably the best city in the world for exploring flavor.  Now that I’m older, it’s my goal to figure out how a splash of this and pinch of that can turn into a delicious pot of adobo.

By the way… did you know my mom blogs, too?