The Recipe That Couldn't Be Lost: My Magnum Opus to Lolo's Kitchen

Nami-miss ko ang aking tahanan. I miss my home.

But for me, home isn't just a place. It’s a sensory tapestry woven from the deepest corners of my memory. It’s the sharp, insistent smell of garlic frying in coconut oil at six in the morning, a scent that still jolts me awake with its promise of warmth and comfort. It’s the rhythmic, almost meditative thump-thump-thump of a mortar and pestle breaking down peppercorns and garlic for a batch of adobo. It’s the quiet concentration etched on my Lolo's face as he expertly deboned a chicken for tinola, his hands moving with an intuition born of decades, not recipes. His absolute certainty about when something was perfectly seasoned, without ever once reaching for a measuring spoon.

Home, for me, is taste. It is memory. It is the constellation of dishes that defined my childhood and connected me to the Philippines, even though I was born thousands of miles away in America. This was the food that taught me my history before I had words for it. The flavors that, decades later, still transport me back to Lolo's kitchen in our New Jersey home, a place where everything made sense, even when the rest of the world outside its walls felt chaotic and incomprehensible.

This book, my magnum opus, which I’ve poured my heart and soul into over the past year—and which I’m thrilled to announce I am now halfway through writing—exists because those flavors, those memories, those precious unwritten recipes, were fading.

The Panic of a Lost Legacy

Lolo is gone now. He passed in 2021, and with him, he took generations of knowledge, techniques, and intuition that were never written down. Lola, bless her heart, is still with us, but she operates on the old understanding, the deeply ingrained oral tradition: "You watched. You should know. If you want to learn, you sit and you watch."

Not write it down. Not measure. Not document. Just absorb. Through presence, through repetition, through the unspoken assumption that there will always be time to learn.

But there isn't always time.

I’m a professional chef. I trained in classical French technique at the Omni Mount Washington Resort, under the demanding yet brilliant tutelage of Executive Chef Jacky François. I’ve worked in everything from Michelin-star hopefuls to high-volume healthcare dining, mastering the exacting standards of professional kitchens. I hold an Associate's in Culinary Arts. I can execute complex techniques, balance flavors with precision, and—given even minimal information—recreate dishes using professional skill and a deep understanding of how cuisine works.

But when Lolo died, a different kind of panic set in. A visceral, chilling realization: I didn’t have his recipes. Not written down. Not documented. Just fragments of memory—the way something smelled when it was just right, the approximate ingredients I’d seen him use, the general technique I’d observed while doing homework at the kitchen table or scrolling through my phone while he cooked, only half-paying attention because... well, because I thought he’d always be there to ask.

This book, which I’ve titled Lolo's Kitchen, is my desperate, determined attempt to preserve what I can. Some recipes I learned directly, through conscious effort in his later years—watching carefully, asking endless questions, getting the proportions right through sheer repetition. Others, I’ve had to painstakingly reconstruct from memory, leveraging my professional training to reverse-engineer dishes from sensory recollection and technical understanding. And some are innovations, my own interpretations of what Lolo might have done with ingredients he never encountered, Filipino techniques applied to new contexts, my voice building on his foundational legacy.

None of them are exactly as Lolo made them. They can’t be. That pure, unadulterated knowledge died with him, in the way that oral tradition always dies—not dramatically, but quietly, when the person who held it in their hands, their intuition, their decades of practice, is suddenly gone. And you realize, too late, that you should have paid more attention.

But they’re close. Close enough that when I make his tinola, I can taste him in it. Close enough that the aroma of sinigang brings me straight back to his kitchen. Close enough that cooking these dishes feels like preserving something essential, even if I can’t preserve it perfectly. This isn't just a cookbook; it's a living archive, a culinary memoir, and a love letter to a man who taught me everything that truly matters about food and family.

From Obligation to Love: My Filipino-American Journey

My relationship with Filipino food didn’t start with love. It started with obligation.

Any Filipino-American can relate: elders tell you to finish your food, you finish it. Non-negotiable. Even when you’re full. Even when you’ve already had two pandesal, and you’re a kid with a kid-sized stomach, and there’s still one more on your plate, and you cannot possibly fit another bite.

You eat it anyway. Because Lola made it. Because refusing would be disrespectful. Because that’s what you do. You eat what’s put in front of you. You show appreciation through consumption. You don’t waste. You honor the work that went into feeding you.

So I’d eat the third pandesal. Slowly. Methodically. Making room where there wasn’t room. Learning that fullness was relative. That you could always eat more if the situation required it.

Those lessons—finish what you’re given, honor elders through actions not just words, food is love and refusing food is refusing love—those shaped my relationship with Filipino cuisine before I even understood I was building a relationship with it.

My mom navigated her relationship with Filipino food differently. She ate most things to be polite. Because maintaining a connection to culture sometimes literally meant consuming it, even when she’d rather not. She wasn't a fan of dinuguan—probably because Lolo made it his way, rich and fatty, sometimes leaving the pork skin on for texture. She’d eat it to be polite when it was served, but she didn’t seek it out. Didn't request it. Didn't make it herself.

That was her relationship with a lot of Filipino food. Present but distant. Connected but not enthusiastic. She’d moved away from this intensity, maybe necessarily, as part of assimilating into American life, maybe as part of building her own identity that was more American than Filipino. She was still Filipino, still connected, still knew these foods and their significance. But at a distance that allowed her to engage selectively, rather than fully.

I started in the same place. Ate to be respectful. Ate because elders said to. Ate because that’s what Filipino kids did. The dinuguan and the whole tiny fried fish with heads still on and the sinigang so sour it made your face pucker—I ate all of it. Not because I necessarily wanted to at first. But because that was the expectation. That was respect made edible.

But somewhere along the way, obligation became preference. The foods I ate because I had to became the foods I ate because I wanted to. Dinuguan stopped being "the challenging dish I’ll eat to prove something" and became "the dish I genuinely crave." Sinigang stopped being "what Lolo makes" and became "what home tastes like." The three pandesal I didn’t have room for became the three pandesal I’d request specifically because I loved them.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened. Maybe there was no single moment. Maybe it was gradual—taste buds maturing, palate developing, Filipino flavors becoming the baseline against which everything else was measured. Maybe it was the repetition. Eating something enough times that your brain stops questioning and starts craving. Or maybe it was understanding. Learning the stories behind the dishes. Understanding why these foods mattered. Connecting flavor to heritage, to identity, to belonging. Food becoming language. Taste becoming connection.

Whatever the mechanism, the transformation was complete. By the time I was asking Lolo "What do you want to eat?" and answering with dinuguan or paksiw na bangus or any of the dishes my American friends would find weird, I wasn’t performing. I wasn’t trying to prove I was Filipino enough. I genuinely wanted those foods. They tasted like home. Like comfort. Like the clearest expression of identity I had access to.

My mom noticed. "You’re more Filipino than me," she’d say. Sometimes joking. Sometimes serious. Always with this complicated mix of pride and maybe a little grief for what she’d lost or never fully had. It wasn’t a competition. Wasn’t a judgment. Just acknowledgment that I’d chosen to embrace what she’d distanced from. That I sought connection she didn't need to seek because she was already close enough, and perhaps needed the space. That I loved these foods genuinely, not obligatorily.

She wasn’t wrong. In this specific way—in the food way—I am more Filipino than her. Not better. Not judging her choices or her journey. Just different. And she saw it. Named it. Acknowledged it.

That’s what this book is truly about. Not just recipes. But that transformation from obligation to love. From eating to please elders to eating because Filipino food became home. From consuming culture out of respect to claiming culture out of genuine connection.

The Hyphenated Space and the Chef's Obsession

I’m Filipino-American. Hyphenated. Caught between cultures in the way that second-generation immigrants always are. Not Filipino enough for the Philippines—my Tagalog is broken, my understanding of culture is fragmented, my connection is primarily through food and family rather than lived experience of the homeland. Not American enough to be just American—my face, my name, my family gatherings all mark me as other, as immigrant-adjacent, as carrying something that doesn’t quite translate.

The hyphenated space is complicated. For years, I felt like I was failing at both. Not Filipino enough because I didn’t speak the language fluently, hadn’t visited often enough, didn’t know all the customs and traditions. Not American enough because I brought weird food to school, because my family gatherings were loud and chaotic in ways my white friends’ families weren’t, because I carried this visible otherness I couldn’t escape even when I wanted to.

But food made it simpler. Food was the clearest connection to heritage I had. The most tangible. The most preservable. When I make Lolo’s adobo, I’m not confused about my identity—I’m Filipino. When I smell pandan, I’m not questioning where I belong—I’m home. When I teach my partner Josie how to make sinigang and she gets the sourness right and understands why the vegetables matter and appreciates the complexity of the broth—in that moment, the hyphenated space doesn’t feel like being caught between. It feels like being both. Building something that honors where I came from while creating something new in the life I’m living now.

Food, Lolo taught me without ever saying it explicitly, is how you tell someone your history without using words. Every ingredient carries meaning. Every technique connects to generations before. Every dish is preservation—of flavor, of memory, of the understanding that this matters, that who we are and where we came from deserves to be carried forward, even when the world doesn’t always value it.

This book is my way of carrying forward what Lolo taught me. Of preserving not just recipes but the philosophy behind them—that cooking is love, that feeding people is how you show you care, that excellence matters whether you’re cooking for resort guests or family gathered around a kitchen table, that food is never just food but always connection and history and identity made tangible.

This Isn't Just a Cookbook. It's a Deep Dive.

I’m thrilled to announce I am now halfway through writing this book, which is projected to be over 700 pages and contain more than 100 meticulously documented recipes. This is my magnum opus, a project of passion and purpose that has become the most demanding and rewarding work of my career.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive Filipino cookbook that attempts to cover the breadth of Filipino cuisine across all regions and traditions—there are other excellent books that do that. This isn't that.

This is specifically Lolo’s kitchen. The dishes he made. The techniques he used. The food I grew up eating in his house in New Jersey. The flavors that defined Filipino food for me before I understood that Filipino food was regional and diverse and much more complex than any single household’s cooking.

Most of what Lolo cooked came from Bicol—specifically from Libmanan in Camarines Sur, where he grew up. Bicolano food is known for being rich, coconut milk-heavy, spicier than other Filipino regions. That shows up in these recipes. The generous use of coconut milk. The siling labuyo (Thai chilies) that appear in dishes where other regions might use none. The specific techniques and flavor combinations that mark food as Bicolano, even when the dish exists in other forms elsewhere.

But Lolo also adapted. He learned dishes from Lola. He learned from neighbors and friends and the broader Filipino community in New Jersey. He adapted recipes to what was available in American grocery stores and Filipino markets in the Northeast. He made substitutions when traditional ingredients weren’t accessible. He created his versions of classic dishes that reflected his background, his preferences, his decades of cooking in America rather than the Philippines.

So these recipes are specific. They’re Lolo’s versions. Which means they’re one interpretation among many valid interpretations. Other Filipino families will make these dishes differently. Use different proportions. Different techniques. Different regional variations. That’s not just okay—that’s how Filipino food works. It’s oral tradition. It’s family-specific. It’s adaptive and alive, rather than fixed and preserved in amber.

What I’m documenting here is how Lolo made these dishes. As close as I can get to his methods using my memory, my training, and my understanding of why things worked the way they did. This isn’t the definitive version. It’s his version. Which is the only version that matters for this book. For this preservation project. For making sure his specific legacy continues.

The recipes are organized into sections that reflect how I experienced Filipino food growing up: from Lolo's Everyday Table to Sundays and Celebrations, The Grill and the Sizzle, Lola's Kitchen, Morning Rituals, Merienda (snacks and street foods), and finally, Sweets and Endings. Each section tells part of the story. Each recipe carries memory alongside technique. And yes, a central, stunning Photo Gallery will offer a visual feast, allowing the stories in the text to truly sing.

For Whom This Book Exists

This book is for Lolo. Obviously. Every page honors him. Every recipe carries his influence, even when it’s my interpretation rather than his exact method. Every word is an attempt to preserve what he taught me before it fades completely from memory.

But it’s also for Lola, who taught me that knowledge isn’t just given—it’s earned through attention and work and the willingness to show up and watch and absorb. Who won’t just hand me recipes but will taste what I make and nod slightly when I get something right, and that nod means more than pages of written instructions ever could.

It’s for my mom, whose career in healthcare foodservice showed me that feeding people who need you is important work, that excellence matters regardless of setting, that service is a calling, not just a job. Who gave me the foundation even if she didn’t pass down all the recipes. Who recognizes that I’m carrying forward what she didn’t feel compelled to carry herself, and supports that without judgment.

It’s for my partner, Josie, who tastes every dish and gives honest feedback and supports the work of preservation even when it means our kitchen smells like fish sauce for days and our weekends involve recipe testing instead of relaxing. Who’s learning to make these dishes herself. Who has an open palate and adventurous spirit and the willingness to embrace Filipino food, even though she didn’t grow up with any of it. Who’ll help me pass this forward to the kids we don’t have yet.

It’s for those future kids—the ones I will have eventually. They’ll be even more removed from the Philippines than I am. Further from the source. More American, less Filipino in the hyphenated balance. But they’ll grow up eating these foods. They’ll know that breakfast can be longsilog. That sinigang is what you make when you need comfort. That grilled pork belly with the right sawsawan is worth the effort. They’ll learn these recipes from me the way I learned them from Lolo—through presence and repetition and the understanding that food is how we tell our history.

It’s for the Filipino-American kids who are growing up hyphenated and confused and trying to figure out how to claim heritage they didn’t grow up fully immersed in. Food is your clearest path. Learn these dishes. Make them your own. Pass them forward. You don’t need to speak perfect Tagalog or have visited the Philippines dozens of times or know every custom and tradition. You just need to know how to make the food. How to season by tasting. How to understand that these flavors carry history. That’s enough. That’s legitimate. That’s yours to claim.

It’s for anyone—chefs, home cooks, enthusiasts—trying to preserve family recipes before it’s too late. Document what you can. Ask questions while elders are still here to answer. Watch carefully. Write things down, even if they tell you that you should just know. Take videos. Record conversations. Get the stories alongside the techniques. Oral tradition is beautiful but fragile, and writing doesn’t betray it—writing sustains it for generations who won’t have the chance to watch the way you did.

And it’s for Lolo, who never wrote down a single recipe but taught me everything that matters about cooking anyway. Who showed me that food is language. That technique carries history. That the way we feed people is how we love them and connect them to where they came from.

Salamat, Lolo. Mahal kita. (Thank you, Lolo. I love you.)

This book is my way of making sure what you taught me doesn’t die with my generation. That the tinola and sinigang and inihaw na liempo live beyond memory. That your kitchen—the smell of garlic and coconut oil, the sound of the mortar and pestle, the understanding that cooking is preservation—continues.

Not perfectly. I’ll never get it exactly right. Never replicate what you made with the precision you had. But close enough.

Close enough to taste you in it. Close enough to feel home. Close enough that when my kids eventually make these dishes, they’ll understand that they come from somewhere. That they’re connected to something that goes back generations. That they’re Filipino even if the Philippines feels distant and abstract. Because they’ll taste it. They’ll know it through flavor before they have words for it. The way I did. The way you taught me.

Nami-miss ko ang aking tahanan.

But home is here. In these recipes. In this preservation work. In the understanding that food carries us forward when nothing else can.

Welcome to Lolo’s Kitchen. The journey continues, and I invite you to join me.

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