The Long Table: FilipinoTable Spreads and Tablescapes
DESSERTS SPREAD
The Long Table
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love to throw parties, and those who would rather get invited to one. I am of the first kind. The number of parties I planned and organized through the years can no longer be counted on my fingers and toes. I host parties from hastily prepared small gatherings at home to elaborately catered events in rented venues, each to mark an important personal, family, or career milestone.
I realize that giving parties involves effort, time, and cost, so it may not be for everyone. What motivates me to go through all the trouble of bringing people together to share food and drinks is the spread of food and how they whet the appetite in an eye-catching tablescape. All my creative juices flow when I am designing the menu and going through its presentation details in my head.
I am guided by the age-old Tagalog admonition, “Pinakain mo na, napintasan ka pa!” which literally translates to “After having fed them, you are still criticized.” It means if you are giving a party, you go all out in cooking tasty dishes and not be stingy on the volume. “Mabuti na ang sumobra, kaysa kulang,” means it is better to have more than less. Ignore these counsel and suffer bitching from your guests for either bad food or short or lacking in amount, leaving one hanging or unsatisfied, “bitin”.
I grew up in a large household dominated by a long dining table. We were poor through most of my childhood, moving from one rented house to another. But, everywhere we went, that long table, a bench-seater for 12, with armless chairs on both ends, went along with us. On one move, where we had dirt for a floor, our trusty dining table sat on a wooden platform raised just inches off the ground.
Our father sat at the head table. You know which end of the table it is by the hinawan, a porcelain-enameled metal wash bowl, placed across his chair. Father dips his hand into it to wet it before and while eating, and cleans it of food particles after. He ate with his fingers at the time, an old habit, even as his children have learned to use forks and spoons in school. On the bench to his left sat our mother and, to his right, our eldest sister. That leaves the rest of us evenly distributed on opposite benches. The chair at the other end of the table remains empty in case a relative or friend drops by to chat and is invited to partake of the meal.
But, it is our normal table or meal spread on that dining table that is distinctly etched in my food memory. For an impoverished family, it looked incongruously festive. Our father, a lowly paid cop, puts a premium on his family’s nourishment alongside his children’s education. A drummer in a band as a side gig, he loved music while reading satisfies his thirst for knowledge. Together on that off-the-ground platform with our long dining table sat an upright piano, an Underwood typewriter, and a 52-volume set of Collier’s encyclopedia, his first investments in his children’s future.
Insisting on a table spread that is not only pleasing to the appetite but also to the eyes shows his embrace of genteel poverty, the idea of living well on a small income. He delegated the planning and setting up of our mealtimes to our mother, who must have proven up to the task despite having only a second-grade education. She stretched the peso to the limit when she goes to the market for food and created tablescapes from decorating ideas shared by her younger sister, who married into wealth.
Anchoring the table spread is the centerpiece. On our dining table, it is usually a tray of artfully arranged fruits in season, like a bunch of ripe bananas towering over sweet mango cheeks or watermelon slices arrayed on a platter. Sometimes, a pitcher of ripe melon strings in sweetened icy water takes the place of the fruit tray for a refreshing dessert drink. Lacking market-bought fruits or sweets, our mother randomly layers a big tray with ripe star apple wholes, halves, and quarters, their purple skin complementing the bright yellow petals of the fragrant ylang-ylang blossoms thrown among them. Both are earlier picked from their trees growing in our backyard.
If mom forgets to buy fruits, father dispatches one of us to the corner store to buy sweet native delicacies like grated coconut or peanut confections, bukayo. Occasionally, we find glutinous rice cakes on a round woven bamboo bilao lined with banana leaves heated limp over live coals and oiled. These kalamay are smothered in latik made of coconut milk and brown sugar. Eating a sweet course of desserts to conclude a meal and after the table has been cleared is not a normal practice in Filipino dining. Instead, desserts are served at the same time as the savory dishes and is eaten between mouthfuls of them.
Either side of the centerpiece is arranged like a mirror image of each other because every dish should be within easy reach of each one of us. At least two main dishes or putahe, one soupy, one either fried or saucy, are the main features of the spread. If workable, no two dishes come from the same protein source. If one is beef, pork, or poultry, the other is fish or other seafood. The combination should work together, too, even with opposing flavors like if one is sour, the other should be salty. This complementarity or contrast also determines the kind of side dishes and condiments that go with what dish. But, whatever the dish may happen to be, they always go well with the main carbohydrate entrée of steamed rice for lunch and dinner or, fried rice at breakfast.
Before the main dishes, there is usually an appetizer or two, pampagana, entrées with an engagingly provocative taste like green mango slices with spicy sautéed shrimp paste dip, bagoong, pickled green papaya salad, atchara, or, fried egg roll, lumpia with sweet and sour dip. After the meal are the desserts, panghimagas, that our father cannot do without. Nutritional balance and harmony of flavors figure prominently in the table spread that I was exposed to at an early age. They guided me to structure my spreads both at home and at the parties I throw over the years.
Here are some table spreads which I have managed to photograph through the years. They include those that I have hired professional caterers to execute for me. Maybe some of these may not look like table spreads to you at all but still, I thought about which food to include, what containers to put them in, and artfully and functionally present them within the limits of a given space. I’m happy.
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