Philippines vs Indonesian food & cuisine

Philippines

SEASONINGS

Filipino flavors are built in layers, then finished at the table. First, the cook builds the base in the pot, but the diner also cooperates and participates while choosing and adding sawsawans (dippings) entirely to his liking, and that transforms the whole taste and experience.

Filipino cooking is organized among the three dominant axes of sour, salty-umami, and sweet. The very core flavors are salty and sour, as sweetness appears, but rarely dominates. Heat is optional and very personal (except for Bicol region and Mindanao, where spice pastes and chilies are prominent). Filipino cooking also conspicuously skips fresh herbs as a finishing element, which Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian cuisines rely on heavily.

Salt is fundamentally important to preserve from spoilage, it comes through patis fish sauce, bagoong isda fermented fish paste, bagoong alamang fermented shrimp paste, and soy sauce. Salt as a bare mineral is the condiment of last resort.  Umami comes from those same fermented ingredients, from long-cooked meat broths, from dried and smoked fish added to stews, and from annatto-colored fat used to start dishes.

Then the saltiness is paired with sourness, which also helps preserve. The Philippines uses vinegar on a fundamentally different scale and in a structurally different way than its neighbors do. Neighboring cuisines use chili to wake up the senses, but Filipinos use vinegar, and this is the core distinction. Vinegars come from palm sap, coconuts, sugarcane, and sugarcane wine. Sourness extensively comes from fruits – tamarind (sour fruit pod), calamansi (tangy citrus), kamias (cucumber tree, acidic green fruit), guava, green mango, batuan (small green sour fruit).

Anato (achiotte) is a coloring spice. It consists of annatto seeds fried in oil, which turn dishes a bright orange-red color. Simmering ingredients in coconut milk — a technique called ginataan — appears often. Coconut milk gata absorbs and carries fat-soluble flavors, softens acidity, and adds richness.  Ginger deodorizes fish and meat, warms broths; bay leaves, a direct inheritance from Spanish cooking, feature braises — adobo, mechado, kaldereta. At the table, achara — green papaya pickled in vinegar and spices — sits apart from the sawsawan lineup to cleanse the palate.

Filipinos flavor building starts with gisa. The gisa is the base for adobo, kare-kare, mechado, afritada, monggo, pancit, many soups. From its contents, it has a lot of ties with Spanish sofrito.  Garlic goes first, browning until golden and fragrant. Onion follows, softening in the garlic-infused oil. Tomato goes last, its liquid is released to form the base liquid of the dish.

One of the most personal parts of a Filipino meal is  sawsawan, a fundamental Filipino dipping sauce, and ultimate flavor customization tool. Some common elements in the sawsawan lineup include:

Suka (vinegar) — usually cane or coconut, sometimes spiced with garlic and labuyo. Used with virtually everything fried or fatty. The vinegar cuts grease and provides the sour axis.

Toyo (soy sauce) — thinner and saltier than Japanese soy sauce, provides the salty-umami axis. Often combined with calamansi to make toyomansi, the most common everyday condiment.

Patis (fish sauce) — patis has many uses in the Filipino kitchen: as a dipping sauce, as a source of salt, and as a flavoring agent. Many Filipino cooks use it instead of salt. In sinigang, for example, there is no salt in the ingredients list; the dish is finished with patis, which adds salinity as well as its own distinctive flavor.

Calamansi — provides the bright, floral citrus note that lime and lemon cannot replicate. It is squeezed directly over anything that needs brightness.

Bagoong — Fermented fish or shrimp paste for deep, complex umami. It has specific pairings, most notably kare-kare and green mango.

Most sawsawan are assembled raw at the table. Lechon sauce is the major exception, and it is a genuinely unusual preparation as it includes water, sugar, breadcrumbs, vinegar, salt, liver, spices, and pepper. Ground roasted liver is the most important ingredient.

BANANA KETCHUP— condiment made from banana, sugar, vinegar, and spices. Its natural color is brownish-yellow, but it is often dyed red to resemble tomato ketchup. Uniquely Filipino, paired with fried chicken, hot dogs, and fast food

PALAPA —  a traditional condiment from the Maranao people of Mindanao, consisting of a spicy and aromatic blend from chopped scallion bulbs, ginger, turmeric, chilies, and often toasted coconut.

Indonesia

SEASONINGS

Indonesian cuisine has bold, direct seasoning rather than the refined, subtle flavor layering. Flavors are centered around a balance of the five sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami tastes. However, in practice, it has a leaning towards sweet undertones, more predominant than in other cuisines.

Some characteristically Indonesian are combinations of turmeric, galangal and ginger (especially the galangal), lemongrass, tamarind, garlic, shallots, kaffir lime leaves, pandan leaves, chili pepper, candlenuts, palm sugar and the sweet soy sauce kecap manis.

Unlike North Indian cooking tradition that favours dried spice mixes, Indonesian cuisine is more akin to Thai, which use more fresh ingredients. Bumbu is the Indonesian word for seasoning; this word frequently appears in all –  spice mixtures, sauces, seasoning pastes.  The bumbu mixture is usually stir-fried in hot cooking oil first to release its aroma, prior to adding other ingredients. There are four main basic bumbu blends:

BUMBU DASAR PUTIH / WHITE BLEND: garlic, shallots, candlenut, coriander, and galangal. It is used in lighter-colored dishes such as opor ayam (chicken in coconut milk), sayur lodeh (vegetable stew), and various sotos (traditional soups).

BUMBU DASAR MERAH / RED BLEND: red chilies are added to the white spice blend, sometimes with tomato, shrimp paste, and sugar. It is used for reddish dishes like sambal goreng, nasi goreng, and various spicy stews.

BUMBU DASAR KUNING / YELLOW BLEND: Contains turmeric along with shallots, garlic, candlenut, coriander, ginger, galangal, and black pepper. It colors and flavors nasi kuning (yellow rice), soto, and pepes (food wrapped in banana leaves).

BUMBU DASAR JINGGA / ORANGE BLEND: a richer blend combining red chili with spices such as caraway, anise, coriander, candlenut, turmeric, and galangal, used in gulai (curry), rendang, and other robustly flavored stews and curries.

Although Indonesia is the home of cloves and nutmeg, these two spices are not as predominantly used in everyday cooking as one might expect. Cloves and nutmeg are more regionally significant, especially in Maluku and some Eastern islands, in medicine and rituals.

Palm sugar is a natural sweetener from the sap of various palm trees, used in tropical Southeast Asia. It has less sweetness and a rich, complex caramel-like taste with hints of butterscotch. In Indonesian cuisine, palm sugar is essential. The two common types are gula jawa (Javanese sugar), dark and molasses-like, and gula aren, which is lighter and more delicate.