17 minute read
FOOD
FOOD VCC chef is well aware of short-lived “adobo war”
by Carlito Pablo
Last year, a government agency in Manila provoked what the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper later described as an “adobo war”.
The ruckus started when the Department of Trade and Industry announced that it wanted to standardize the recipe for adobo.
Adobo is one of the best-loved dishes among Filipinos anywhere in the world. It’s typically pork or chicken stewed in vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, and peppercorns.
Critics heaped scorn on the standardization plan and called on the government to leave their adobo alone.
The backlash prompted the agency a couple of days later, on July 11, 2021, to say in a statement that it is not looking to impose a mandatory standard but only for purposes of “promotion abroad”.
That’s “because there are thousands or millions of different ‘lutong adobo’ [adobo dishes]”.
“To many Filipinos,” the agency acknowledged, “the best adobo is the one ‘cooked at home’ or ‘cooked by their parents or lola [grandmother]”.
Although adobo is often referred to as the unofficial national dish in the Philippines, it is done differently in practically every household.
As well, even people in the same family could have different versions or preferences of how the dish is prepared.
One example is the household of Helen Orimaco-Pumatong, a chef instructor in hospitality management at Vancouver Community College (VCC).
She related with amusement that she and her husband don’t agree on what is a good adobo.
“Me and my husband don’t have adobo the same way,” Orimaco-Pumatong told the Straight in a phone interview.
Her spouse likes one that’s cooked long until the fat is released and the meat fries in its own grease.
“I like it in a syrup that’s kind of sweet,” Orimaco-Pumatong said. She also said she prefers her adobo with caramelized red onions.
The two met in the Philippines when she was already a chef in Canada. They have two kids, both boys, one 14 and the other seven.
The instructor was only six when her family immigrated to Canada during the 1970s. Orimaco-Pumatong learned to cook Filipino dishes from her mother, who was a home-economics teacher in their native country.
“We would always have people over at our house, like 20, 30, 40 people in a tight house,” she recalled of the family’s early days in Canada.
“And we celebrated every birthday, every holiday, and so my mom would always be cooking.”
Orimaco-Pumatong went to Sir Sandford Fleming Elementary School and David Thompson Secondary School, both in Vancouver. In high school, she took a lot of food courses.
“It was just something that interested me, or maybe it was because I was in it already, cooking for the family,” she said.
She later started working as a cook and dietician at hotels as well as hospitals and health facilities operated by Providence Health Care.
Meanwhile, Orimaco-Pumatong also entered VCC’s culinary program, eventually earning her credentials, including a Red Seal certification. “I do a lot of things all at once,” she said about working and going to school at the same time.
She started teaching at VCC in 2001 and said she has been in the kitchen for so long that she’s comfortable preparing most dishes, no matter which culinary tradition these come from.
“My thing is, it’s about cooking techniques,” she said.
Asked about a classic French dish, beef bourguignon, and a near equivalent in Filipino cuisine, beef kaldereta (for which she sometimes gets requests through her private catering business), OrimacoPumatong said both dishes use the same cooking method.
The Filipino dish is beef stewed with tomato sauce, potatoes, carrots, and bell peppers, and the French stew uses red wine for braising.
“It’s the technique of stewing, so it doesn’t matter what culture it is,” she said. “It’s actually like a curry, too. So it’s the same process.”
She went on to note that what makes beef kaldereta distinct from beef bourguignon is that Filipinos add liver paste, which is, essentially, French pâté, giving the dish a “very earthy flavour”.
For special occasions, Filipinos put olives in the dish, bringing a “western style or western flair to it”.
With adobo, Orimaco-Pumatong noted that a lot of non-Filipinos have become familiar with the dish.
“My Chinese friends or colleagues, the first thing they’ll say is adobo, because everybody [Filipinos] cooks it at home,” she said about what happens during potluck parties with Filipinos.
Her family hails from Tagbilaran City in Bohol, a province in the central Philippine region known as Visayas.
Among people there, their adobo version is called humba, which features the addition of sliced pineapples and dried banana blossoms.
Orimaco-Pumatong believes that although adobo is prepared in different ways, the dish always presents as a “balance” of savouriness, tartness, and sweetness, which makes it appealing. g
Helen Orimaco-Pumatong has been teaching at Vancouver Community College since 2001, and she learned to cook from her mother, who was a home-economics teacher in the Philippines.
– VCC chef Helen Orimaco-Pumatong
R
aga RIDES INTO SUNSET
Ricky Sharma and his uncle, Raj Sharma, have shut down their West Side restaurant. d A LANDMARK VANCOUVER
restaurant has served its final meal.
Raga Restaurant closed because of the pending sale of its building at 1177 West Broadway, according to owner Raj Sharma.
The restaurant is on the first floor of the office tower on the site, which was owned by businessman Ronald S. Roadburg until his death on May 17, 2021.
It’s now owned by the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation, a registered charity created to strengthen the Jewish community, alleviate chronic problems in society, and help shield at-risk communities from racism and violence.
Sharma told the Straight by phone that the charity offered him a lease, which would give a new buyer an opportunity to terminate it by giving one year’s notice.
Sharma declined the offer.
“Hopefully, we find a smaller spot,” he said. “And then we will carry on with our name. Not right away. We’ll take a break.”
Raga opened in 1981 and was taken over in 1988 by Sharma, who served authentic North Indian cuisine in a mellow and tastefully designed room.
It’s the second long-standing restaurant to close on Vancouver’s West Side this month due to a change or pending change in ownership of a building.
John Bishop shuttered his iconic 36-year-old dining establishment, Bishop’s, after a new building owner demanded what he called a “whopping rent increase”.
Over the years, Raga hosted many celebrities—such as Goldie Hawn, Sarah McLachlan, Mel Gibson, and Ravi Shankar—and a who’s who in the Indo Canadian community.
In the words one of those diners, wellknown broadcaster Shushma Datt, it’s “very sad to hear they have closed”. g by Charlie Smith
Visit Straight.com to read Helen OrimacoPumatong’s personal adobo recipe, which uses pork belly.
LUNARFEST Inclusive LunarFest launches the Year of the Tiger
by Charlie Smith
The managing director of the Asian-Canadian Special Events Association, Charlie Wu, says he wants every one of his company’s LunarFest Vancouver celebrations to have a purpose. And that’s certainly on display with a series of events and displays ringing in the Lunar New Year. To bring in the Year of the Tiger, the theme is “Together, Stronger!”.
“This year, we want to take it in a different direction than we have done in the past,” Wu tells the Straight in an interview over coffee on the patio of the Prado Cafe near Granville Island. “It will be a celebration for everyone, not just communities like the Chinese or the Taiwanese or Koreans and Vietnamese.”
Wu emphasizes that he appreciates the way individual Asian countries embrace the Lunar New Year. However, he feels it’s important to make this year’s celebration even more inclusive in the face of the pandemic. To help accomplish that, there are four different destinations for this year’s LunarFest Vancouver, each appealing to the sensibilities of local residents.
Festivities begin at 1 p.m. on Saturday (January 29) with a workshop for children at Granville Island, following the opening ceremony for LunarFest. According to Wu, there will also be a street team from Cirque du Soleil on the island in advance of its March performances of Alegria in Vancouver.
On February 1, the Vancouver Zion Mission Choir, which originated in the local Korean community in 1982, will perform at the Orpheum with the Harmonia
LunarFest Vancouver promotes greater awareness of conservation by making crafts available to local schoolchildren, enabling them to learn about bobcats in Canada and leopards in Taiwan. Orchestra. This show will also be available online. “They will be performing pieces that you don’t normally hear in a Lunar New Year celebration,” Wu says.
Then there’s an installation celebrating Lunar New Year at the corner of Cardero and Robson streets (see separate article on this page). And the Lantern City exhibition, done in collaboration with the Society of We Are Canadians Too, returns to the north plaza of the Vancouver Art Gallery from Thursday (January 27) to February 9. The Lantern City exhibition will feature works by two high-profile South Asian artists in Vancouver, Jag Nagra and Sandeep Johal, and nonbinary artist Paige Bowman, which will be murals wrapped around giant cylinders. Two other large pillars on the site will feature works from the Red Paper Series by one of Taiwan’s most famous artists, Hung Tung, who pioneered the postmodernist movement in the island nation before he died in 1987.
Wu tells the Straight that Hung didn’t even begin painting until he was about 50 years old, making him a really late bloomer.
“His work is very, very colourful,” Wu says, “and because of these colours, his work is seen as spiritual as well.”
Another exhibition of lanterns will be at Granville Island from January 29 to February 21 in an exhibition called Forever Young. Coast Salish artist Jody Broomfield’s Honouring the Spirit of the Children and Taiwanese Indigenous Rukai artist Pacake Taugadhu’s Lrikulau are two of the large murals there. Lrikulau features the famous Formosan clouded leopard, which is believed to have gone extinct (though there were alleged sightings in 2018). Other lanterns at Granville Island will feature art by Heather Sparks, Quw’utsun muralist Charlene Johnny, and Filipino Canadian painter Danvic Briones.
The lanterns at both locations will be accompanied by Taiwanese composer ChaoMing Tung’s “Woven Melodies”, which incorporates the pipa, a traditional Han instrument, performed by Hui-Kuan Lin. The song was created for this year’s LunarFest.
All of this is in addition to online art exhibits, crafts distributed to schoolchildren, and virtual programs, including a puppet-making show, fortune-telling, and a screening of the film Emergence: Out of the Shadows, celebrating queer activists with Sher Vancouver. g
West End Wishes brings neon glow to lower Robson
by Charlie Smith
This year, LunarFest Vancouver has with three West End restaurants on a special menu to bring in the Year of the Tiger. In addition, LunarFest has partnered with the West End Business Improvement Association to display an installation, West End Wishes, at the corner of Cardero and Robson streets from January 30 to February 15. Below is an interview with installation artist Lady Hao Hao, conducted with the help of a Mandarin-language translator.
Georgia Straight: What was the inspiration behind the West End project?
Lady Hao Hao: The West End BIA has expressed interest in being part of the LunarFest and the Lantern City (see article above) over the past two years. We had a lantern installation at English Bay last year; however, we couldn’t do one this year. To continue the partnership, we are showcasing West End Wishes, which features my work from 2020 with three large couplets: Man (Fulfilled), Fu (Fortune), and Hao (Good). We decorate our homes and workplaces with couplets during Lunar New Year. We will be displaying the lantern version of them outdoors in the street at Cardero Street and Robson.
Taiwanese-born artist Lady Hao Hao created couplets in LED-style “neon” for LunarFest. Georgia Straight: What were you trying to say with the art?
Lady Hao Hao: I really like to share tradition with a contemporary context. Vancouver used to be known for its neon signs in the entertainment district, and these three couplets are made with the LED version of neon lights. Robson Street is known for some great Asian cuisine. I think the three words really speak well to the kind of experiences one would get by visiting Robson Street for great Lunar New Year dinners.
Georgia Straight: What do you want people to think about when they look at the image? Lady Hao Hao: I hope people really try to reflect on things or memories that speak to the three words. We need lots of optimism after two years of pandemic; we all need to see the light at the end of the tunnel and hope for a brighter future.
Georgia Straight: Is there anything you would like to say about the restaurants that LunarFest has partnered with?
Lady Hao Hao: The three restaurants are Dinesty Dumpling House (1719 Robson Street), Banana Leaf (1779 Robson Street), and Forage (1300 Robson Street). All three restaurants have Asian connections but they also represent our diversity in Vancouver. Dinesty highlights the tradition, Banana Leaf shares the flavor of Southeast Asia, and Forage focuses on being sustainable and green. I think they really reflect Vancouver well—its past, present, and future. g
LUNARFEST South Asian art spices up East Asian celebration
by Charlie Smith
This year’s LunarFest celebrations in Vancouver will have a touch of masala. That’s because two celebrated Vancouver artists of Punjabi ancestry, Jag Nagra and Sandeep Johal, have created lanterns that will be on display on the north side of the Vancouver Art Gallery from Thursday (January 27) to February 9. The Lantern City exhibition, called We Are Family, is a collaboration of the Asian-Canadian Special Events Association and the Society of We Are Canadians Too.
“I’m really grateful that they are including South Asian voices and stories this year,” Nagra, creative director of the Punjabi Market Collective, tells the Straight by phone.
Last year, Nagra generated nationwide attention for designing a colourful Vancouver Canucks practise jersey timed for Diwali. Nagra’s work for Lantern City, Nazar Battu, features vibrantly painted masks, which are sometimes left at the entrances of South Asian people’s homes or businesses to ward off the “evil eye”.
“Most of my artwork that I typically do— if you’ve seen it—is very bright,” Nagra says. “And the reason I do that is because I suffer from seasonal depression.… For my own mental health, I like to saturate my artwork really heavily with colours.”
Johal had an exhibition at the Surrey Art Gallery last year celebrating trailblazing South Asian women. In a phone interview with the Straight, she says that she features a great deal of tiger imagery in her work, so it made sense to incorporate one of these paintings into a Year of the Tiger lantern. Her piece, One Day, features a multicoloured big cat on a branch leaning into a woman wearing a bold black-and-white pattern. They’re holding hands, completely comfortable with one another.
According to Johal, the painting was done at a time when people were being told to stay away from each other and not to touch, due to the pandemic. “So I titled it One Day, thinking about that day when this would end and we would all be together again,” she says.
The initial drawing was auctioned off by the B.C. Women’s Health Foundation. And there’s a reason why Johal is attracted to the juxtaposition of women and tigers.
“I think about them all the time,” she says. “When I did my first mural for the Vancouver Mural Festival, I had a blackand-white woman standing on a tiger.”
Even though Johal is Sikh, she’s been drawn to tigers in part because of the Hindu goddess Durga, who is the protective mother of the universe. Durga is represented in Hindu mythology as riding on a tiger, unleashing her divine wrath against oppressors.
The Vancouver Mural Festival piece, Johal says, was a “loose embodiment of Durga”.
“The title of the mural was Fierce Like Tigers, and I found that quote on the side of a convenience store,” she recalls “It was on some kind of poster. It said, ‘Girls are fierce like tigers.’ I thought that was an incredible sentiment.”
Some of her work addresses men’s violence against women. And in South Asia, the tiger has come to represent women’s liberation, including in the graphic novel Priya’s Shakti, which left a lasting impression on Johal.
“I mean, 2022 is the Year of the Tiger,” Johal says. “And I really hope that encourages people to really sit in their power and make good choices and be generous and support one another as we navigate this global pandemic.” g
The creative director of the Punjabi Market Collective, Jag Nagra, says she’s really grateful that LunarFest included South Asian imagery like her Nazar Battu painting (left) on its lanterns.
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C
oexistence IN HARMONY
d VANCOUVER ARTIST and fashion
designer Cindy Wu has long had an interest in sustainability. So when she was asked to present a painting to this year’s LunarFest Vancouver celebration, it had an environmental theme.
Wu’s painting, Coexistence (above), incorporates the imagery of two hands being clasped together, which is commonly done as a new year’s greeting. But she included a twist: one of the hands actually represents the natural world.
“It symbolizes that we are tightly bonded with nature,” Wu tells the Straight by phone. “And during my creative process, I tested out different gestures with my own hands.”
The painting will be available on the LunarFest Vancouver website (LunarFest. ca), according to one of the festival organizers.
Growing up in the large southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, Wu learned her love of art from her father, a Chinese film director. She was inspired by seeing how actors could change their looks with the help of fashion, makeup, and different camera angles.
Wu spent three years as a part-time designer for one of China’s largest swimwear brands before graduating with a master’s and striking out on her own.
“In my fashion, I like to use hybrid elements as well,” Wu says. “I incorporate Chinese paintings with western-style geometric shapes into cutting and sewing.”
Last year, Wu was crowned Miss Chinese Vancouver in a competition broadcast on Fairchild Television.
“I wish to use my artwork to let people know there will be balance of bio-integration of humans and the environment—and to coexist in harmony is important,” Wu says. g by Charlie Smith
JAN 15 - MAR 20, 2022
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For All Time: the Shakespeare First Folio is co-organized by the University of British Columbia and the Vancouver Art Gallery and is curated by Dr. Gregory Mackie, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literatures and Katherine Kalsbeek, Head, Rare Books and Special Collections, UBC Library Image Credit: Yangos Hadjiyannis, at Kre.is Immersive
