Jordy Navarra’s festive Filipino feast, served family-style

One of many Philippines’ most acclaimed cooks shares his scrumptious tackle Christmas eating – which is centred round sharing meals and smoky flavours.

Softly spoken, light in nature and nearly all the time smiling, Jordy Navarra is as far faraway from the notion of a shouty, egotistical chef as you possibly can think about. 

Having educated in famed eating places together with Heston Blumenthal’s The Fats Duck close to London, in addition to Bo Innovation in Hong Kong, each of which attained the culinary holy grail of three Michelin stars, Navarra can be forgiven for having developed an outsized culinary ego.

As a substitute, he stays a modest however extremely revered chef and restaurateur in his residence nation of the Philippines, somebody who proudly flies the flag on the worldwide stage for his nation’s meals and tradition. Since opening in 2016, his Manila-based restaurant Toyo Eatery has received constant essential and public acclaim, together with being named the Finest Restaurant within the Philippines by Asia’s 50 Finest Eating places. 

Simply as considerably, the 39-year-old from Parañaque in Metro Manila has additionally ensured that Toyo (because it’s generally recognized) is one in every of Southeast Asia’s most sustainable locations to eat, working with a community of small farmers and producers to champion biodiversity and components from throughout the Philippines’ greater than 7,000 islands.

Christmas is an enormous deal for Navarra, as it’s for nearly each Filipino. Purchasing malls across the nation famously have Christmas decorations up greater than six weeks earlier than Halloween, because of a 100-day Christmas countdown that begins on 16 September.

The depth, commercialisation and length of the festive season – with carols taking part in for greater than 1 / 4 of the 12 months – can imply that expectations to ship the right Christmas are raised sky-high. However the likelihood for households to come back collectively, particularly when tens of millions of Filipinos dwell and work abroad, is priceless.

“I’ve fond recollections of Christmas as I grew up with out my brother and sister round as they have been dwelling within the US,” Navarra explains, “so the vacation season was once they’d get to come back residence and go to. It was all about gathering, sharing meals and catching up.”

As in Spain and far of Latin America, Filipinos primarily have fun Christmas on Christmas Eve. With 85% of the inhabitants being Roman Catholic, attending mass is an important a part of the celebrations, both within the night or at midnight.

Thereafter, the standard Noche Buena (Good Evening) feast takes centre stage. It’s a meal indelibly related to Christmas, the treasured cultural equal of a roast turkey lunch or dinner which is served in lots of international locations on 25 December. 

A help-yourself desk is generously decked out with plates together with honey-cured ham, Edam cheese recognized domestically as queso de bola, pan de sal (candy tender bread rolls) and fluffy, sugar-topped ensaymada buns. To comply with, there’s tropical fruit salad that’s typically sweetened with condensed milk, fruit cake and tsokolate sizzling chocolate to drink, produced from spherical tablets of roasted cocoa beans known as tablea.

Households love so as to add different dishes to their festive Noche Buena desk, and for Navarra this contains grilled seafood akin to shrimp, grilled cuts of pork, or, if lots of people are coming, lechon (a complete roast pig) that could be a frequent showstopper at Christmas across the Philippines.

Nonetheless, as a chef who has championed his nation’s wealthy indigenous meals tradition like few others, after Christmas Eve’s Noche Buena feast has been cleared away, Navarra chooses to serve a particular meal on Christmas Day that celebrates components and cooking methods from throughout the nation.

At residence with household and buddies, Navarra, enjoys the proudly Filipino custom of communal consuming, kamayan. Which means “with palms” in Tagalog, the Philippines’ most generally spoken language, kamayan denotes meals that’s served family-style atop banana leaves which can be unfold throughout tables. 

It’s a type of eating that’s typically seen at communal celebrations all year long, from birthdays to household reunions – however hardly ever at Christmas. Navarra wished to vary that, not solely at residence but additionally at his restaurant Toyo, as he feels that the kamayan expertise is outlined by togetherness and sharing.

“We wished to have fun the best way of consuming and feeling you get with a Filipino vibe, a contented Christmas feeling with meals that’s all about sharing,” he explains. “Utilizing your palms to eat is a really Filipino, very intimate approach to eat.” 

Amongst all of the dishes in his kamayan dinner at residence, Navarra is adamant that a very powerful – as in any Filipino meal – is rice.

“Filipino meals all the time revolves round rice, the last word consolation. We use a rice from Banaue then cook dinner it and steam it in banana leaves – it is like sticky rice, however you continue to really feel the person grains. Cooking rice over a wooden hearth means you get these toasty notes. Then we wish a distinction of temperatures, textures and style profiles to go together with it.”

These textures and style profiles embody completely different variations of tuyo, salted and dried fish.

“Pinindang is one kind of dried fishmade with humoy-humoy, a kind of anchovy, which is formed in a circle then sun-dried on leaves,” he says. “It is clearly naturally salty and has pungent aromas of the ocean. We found it in Vintage Province the place it is solely produced in small portions by native households, which means the availability could be very restricted.” 

He additionally serves a seafood dish known as kinilaw, one other native dish that proudly represents Filipino culinary heritage, as Navarra explains:

“Kinilaw is likely one of the easiest approaches to cooking within the Philippines nevertheless it’s additionally profound as you attempt to spotlight the style of uncooked seafood utilizing sourness and acid, whether or not recent sourness from calamansi, a small, darkish inexperienced citrus, or fermented from vinegar or bagoong. It is so good because the pure umami cuts by way of the richness of fish like mackerel or tuna.”

No festive feast within the Philippines might ever be full with out some type of pork. At residence on Christmas Day, Navarra serves the identical lower and breed of pig as at his restaurant Toyo:

“As a substitute of an entire pig, we deal with the hock generally known as pata, utilizing black pig from Batangas, which is a neighborhood crossbreed with Japanese Kurobuta pork. We cook dinner it thrice, first stewing it with typical Filipino aromatics together with bay leaf, garlic and black pepper. Then we fry it chilly, break it down and sear it in a forged iron pan for an additional laying of browning.”

Within the Philippines, the must-haves with crispy pata are dipping sauces known as sawsawan:

“Now we have two, one is a discount of the broth, however there’s additionally home made vinegar.So, you may have a alternative of dipping between a savoury and in addition a bitter dip. You get fatty, crunchy bits of pork, which all of us love and affiliate as very festive meals, then additionally the great crispy pores and skin for distinction.”

A second iteration served on banana leaves for the festive kamayan menu is grilled pork. The love of all issues smoky, charred and cooked on the grill runs deep in Navarra, because it does with tens of millions of Filipinos: “Celebratory cooking in my household’s family all the time included some type of grilled meals,” he explains. “My lola (grandmother) used to run a palengke (moist market), and out of doors it have been barbecue joints that we might all the time purchase from. To at the present time, it is nonetheless one in every of our go-to meals, regardless of the event could also be.”

He pairs the pork with the bitter, clear and salty notes of mangga at bagoong, a mango salad. The salad’s sometimes Filipino mixture of flavours comes from slices of fermented inexperienced mangoes with ripe mangoes, that are combined with bagoong, shrimp paste. Navarra makes the shrimp paste at residence and in addition at his restaurant Toyo, one in every of many fermentations he crafts together with vinegars and fish sauce known as patis, produced from any leftover fish.

For dessert, Navarra is an enormous fan of tupig, a rice cake cooked in banana leaf, made utilizing sticky rice. One other candy deal with is a kind of cassava cake that riffs on the Filipino Christmas basic, bibingka. Historically, these moreish, fluffy rice truffles, topped with coconut, brown sugar and melted butter, are cooked in banana leaves on charcoal braziers and bought exterior church to be eaten after Christmas mass has ended.

Navarra displays on what makes his Christmas kamayan meal particular: “Meals simply tastes higher while you eat together with your palms,” he says. “It is also a pleasant change of tempo from regular consuming. A visitor on the restaurant informed me lately that as you employ your palms to eat, you may’t actually contact your cellphone, which means that you just’re extra current – and within the second.”

That feels like the right Christmas recipe.