Mangan Tamu: Recipes of Love

A feature on the family's cookbook, Mangan Tamu, 2012 by Ms. Ballesteros,
Lifelong Learners. Carmelita C. Ballesteros

Mangan Tamu: Recipes of Love

What does Mangan Tamu mean? Is it a Japanese manga (comics)? Why would my friend Tish, a noncomics person, give me a manga?
Well, after a closer look at the book’s cover, I realized that it’s a cook book. “Mangan” is pronounced with the Filipino /ng/ sound as in “ngayon” which means today. The sentence, “Mangan Tamu,” is the Kapampangan equivalent of “Let’s eat.”
My family and I flipped through the pages of the book and found ourselves smiling, chuckling, laughing and enjoying the stories behind the recipes.
Compiled and edited by Gigi Bautista-Rapadas and Tish Bautista (2012), it is a tribute to their aunt, Noli H. Bautista. The back cover says, “The kitchen was her haven and all of us who tasted her food tasted heaven.”
Although Noli, fondly called Tatat by her nieces and nephews, never married, she gave birth to several generations of food-lovers and kitchen wizards in the Bautista extended family. She always told them that the magic ingredient is LOVE.
Bound by the enduring ties of family, the Bautistas around the world contributed recipes learned from Tatat as well as from other family members and friends. Here’s a sampling:


MORISQUETA TOSTADA a LA TATA PAUL. I’m putting this ahead of Tatat’s recipe because it captures the spirit of the book and Tatat’s legacy. Contributor Ditos Capati writes, “…I couldn’t give any measurements as these are all tantiya-tantiya and just gut feel. So sorry, cannot say kung ilan ang ano!”
Ingredients: Leftover rice refrigerated overnight, Leftover pork chop or barbecue or fried chicken chopped in small bits, Eggs, Chopped garlic, Salt, Oil (Purico then).
Procedure: 1) Soak the refrigerated rice in water while at the same time breaking it up with your hands so the rice grains get all separated. Drain the water afterwards and dry. 2) Heat up the oil with the chopped garlic and when brown, pour all the rice mixing it until almost dry.
3) Now dump in all the pork or bbq or chicken. Break eggs over the rice and mix them in. Don’t bother scrambling them as they will end up scrambled anyway. 4) Keep mixing until the rice is fully fried and voila! Kanin na, may ulam pa!


ESCABECHE A LA TATAT. This is from the affectionate recollection of Lorni Capati-Dillon.
Ingredients: Fish, garlic, onions, ginger, sugar, vinegar, salt, cornstarch, red or green bell pepper.
Procedure (verbatim from Tatat): 1) Fry fish a little (not fully cooked). Set aside. 2) In a pan, guisa (sauté) bawang (garlic), sibuyas (onions sliced big), ginger and a little water. 3) Add sugar, vinegar, salt and cornstarch. 4) Add fish, let boil. 5) A few minutes before being fully cooked, add sliced pepper (red or green).


DRINK OF THE GODS. Actually, this is a nontraditional recipe. It comes with a heart-warming, funny, and nostalgic anecdote written by Ditos Capati.
Tata Nilo loved spending time with his nephews back in Pampanga in the 1950s. The sharpest sharpshooter in the neighborhood, he was adored by his nephews. They loved Tata Nilo because unlike their parents, he didn’t make them take a bath. He would take them hunting birds, then he and the boys would grill birds as well as hito and bulig for lunch.
One day, Tata Nilo took them boys to a sugar cane field where a carabao was pulling huge gears to draw juice from sugar cane. The juice was being cooked in a cauldron to make raw sugar. Thick and black, raw sugar looked absolutely revolting.
Tata Nilo asked for bamboo glasses, had them filled with raw sugar, then told the boys to try it. Fearless cowboys that they were, they downed the enemy in one gulp. It was the sweetest drink with a divine sweetness beyond words. It’s the drink of the gods!
DOREEN FERNANDEZ’S LECHE FLAN. Doreen Fernandez, the food guru, was also a literature professor. She and Tish Bautista were visiting lecturers at the Ohio University in Ohio, USA in 1983. Tish, like other international visiting lecturers, was invited to showcase a native dish during a party for students.
Tish writes, “Doreen knew I had a fear of kitchens and so she taught me the simplest recipe she knew – the recipe below.”
Ingredients: 1/4 cup sugar to caramelize, 1 regular-sized can evaporated milk, 3 eggs, 3/4 cup sugar.
Procedure: 1) put 1/4 cup sugar in big leche flan llanera and caramelize directly on burner. Do not stir with a spoon. Just swirl and slide back and forth over the fire until it turns amber. Watch carefully as this burns easily. Let cool. Caramel should harden.
2) Beat eggs slightly in a bowl, just to break the yolks. Add milk and sugar and stir gently, just until combined. Tip: do not use a mixer for this, otherwise bubbles will form. 3) Pour mix into a llanera – make sure caramel has completely cooled and hardened before doing this. Cover with aluminum foil.
4) Steam leche flan over boiling water for about 40 minutes. To check for doneness, remove foil cover and gently shake llanera. Flan should be firm. 5) Cool leche flan completely before serving. Run a knife around the edges and then invert onto your serving plate. Caramel should coat top of flan and run down the sides.
SPAGHETTI IN A JIFFY OF TITA AGGIE. When maids take a day off, the kids are drafted for kitchen duty so they would learn how to cook. But some simply don’t like cooking. What happens when the maids are not around and no one among the teenage kids know how to cook?
Fortunately, there’s Tita Aggie whose recipe below is a real lifesaver. It can be done in 10 minutes and it tastes so good you would eat your plates clean.
Ingredients: 1 box of spaghetti, a big can of tomato sauce, a can of Libby’s Corned Beef, and Tita Aggie’s magic hands.
Procedure: 1) Boil the spaghetti until pliant enough. 2) At the same time, heat the pan with the tomato sauce in it. 3) Mix in the corned beef and stir to perfection. 4) Pour the spaghetti into the pan and stir them all together.


Mangan Tamu is a simple cook book with no pretensions to culinary perfection. The loving, honest, down-to-earth, and funny anecdotes thrown generously into the recipes turn them into priceless ‘value meals.’
For comments or inquiries, please e-mail Dr. Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista