Like all Filipino migrant workers, I always count the days before I fly home for my Christmas vacation.
Coming home is always the highlight of my year.
For me, being home in the Philippines is not only a way to escape the freezing temperatures of a gloomy winter in Korea, but also a way to forget work and the challenges of being a migrant worker. And when I am finally home excitedly awaiting the arrival of Christmas Day, my mother always made sure she has tablea tsokolate and evaporated milk on hand so that we would all be able to enjoy the family tradition of enjoying this hot beverage together.
Since we were kids, the family would wake up to a Christmas Day breakfast of my mother’s tablea tsokolate, ensaimadas, and at times, pinipig that I would soak into a warm cup of the tsokolate. Tablea tsokolate is a chocolate beverage made from cacao beans that had been dried under the sun, then roasted and grounded. For measured consumption and easy storage, the grounded beans are molded into tablet form, thus tablea, the Spanish word for ‘tablet’. According to food historians, the cacao beans and the chocolate beverage were introduced to the Philippines from Mexico during the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade that started in 1565 and ended in 1815. Although there are now fewer cacao farmers selling unsweetened tablea tsokolate at local traditional markets here in the Negros Island, commercial manufacturers make it available at supermarkets in sweetened tablets.
My mother has her own way of preparing tablea tsokolate.
She starts by grinding into powder form all the tablets from a whole pack. Since the tablets are already sweetened, she does not need to add sugar. My mother says grinding them will make it faster for the powdered chocolate to melt. She then pours five 350ml cans of evaporated milk into a sauce pan, mixes in the grounded tablea tsokolate, and stirs the mixture over low heat to make them espeso, the term she uses to describe the mix when it becomes thicker and its aroma starts to waft all over the kitchen – an aroma of the blend of the chocolatiness of the tsokolate and the creaminess of the milk that, when I take a whiff of it, always brings back memories of past Christmases when we used to enjoy this with our grandparents. My mother does not add water to the brew because it would make it aguado or watery.
While espeso is the Spanish word for thick, it is caring hands and patience that are needed when making tablea tsokolate as the slow, continuous stirring could last for about half an hour, depending on the quantity of evaporated milk used. My mother was still very young when she was taught how to make tablea tsokolate by her elders who have long passed, and other than the recipe and the skill, she also inherited the old copper pitcher called chocolatera, and the batirol, the whisk that was made from the wood of a guava tree.
When the hot beverage has finally achieved espeso quality, my mother pours a portion into the chocolatera and uses the batirol to whisk the hot liquid. This procedure not only produces the foam on the drink but also adds a good stir to the tsokolate before it is transferred into a porcelain cup to be enjoyed.
It has been centuries since the first cacao beans crossed the Pacific Ocean from Mexico, and although the Aztecs called it Xocolātl, the original Nahuatl word for chocolate, Filipinos have called it sukwate or sikuwate in the Visayas, sikulate in Mindanao, suklati in Pampanga, and of course, tablea or tabliya in our own Hiligaynon language. And although tablea tsokolate may have a foreign origin, we have made it our own, even pairing it with rice as our elders would simply pour tsokolate over it, or in my case, with pinipig. But be it with rice or pinipig, it is an original Filipino experience.
The popped pinipig, on the other hand, is a much easier task, something that I can probably manage on my own. Pinipig is flattened glutinous rice that was harvested two weeks before maturity. It is then roasted over low fire using a kalahâ or large wok, and then transferred into a wooden mortar called lusong in order to be flattened using a hal-ong or wooden pestle. The chaff is then separated from the pinipig using a winnowing basket or bilao. Pinipig is sold by the kilo, or fractions of it, in traditional markets.
In order to make popped pinipig, my mother brings to a boil the cooking oil in the saucepan and when it does, she throws in a handful of pinipig that quickly pops in the heat. The popped pinipig is immediately scooped out with a strainer to avoid overfrying. And since we only need a bowl of popped pinipig, only a few handfuls were enough. After popping, the pinipig has become crunchier and softer to eat (read blog here).
And as we now sit down together for our Christmas breakfast tradition and are gathered around a table full of blessings, our family is always grateful. To others, the ensaimadas, tablea tsokolate, and popped pinipig may just be another type of bread, hot beverage, and flattened rice, respectively, but for us, they represent the taste and flavors handed down to us by our grandparents and elders, all of whom we continue to remember and honor when we enjoy these ourselves.
Soon, I would leave home again, and how I wish the flavor from each sip of my mother’s warm tablea tsokolate would forever remain in my palate.
But however long a time I have to endure until my next Christmas vacation, all the anticipation and yearning are always forgotten whenever I am once more surrounded by my family and enjoying my mother’s tablea tsokolate and popped pinipig on Christmas Day.😍
#OFW #migrantworker #tableatsokolate #christmas #christmasholidays #essay #pinoyofw
