Finding Home Through Kare Kare
While its origin remains a mystery, this savory Filipino stew takes on a different meaning for everyone. Words and images by Cassandra Balbas
We’re excited to try something new! At the end of this piece, we invite you to answer a survey about the different ingredients you use when cooking, and have grown up eating in kare kare. You can also jump to the survey by directly clicking on this link.
As a thank you for participating, you’ll be added to a drawing for a gift card to Filipino Food Crawl. Survey results will be shared with the community in another issue!
Oftentimes, when I think of my mom, I also think about her love for food. She and I butt heads to no end, but when it comes to Filipino food, all conflict melts away. This is particularly true about our shared love for kare kare. The thick and savory soup, cognizant now as an elixir, has become our panacea, removing the wedge that prideful Ilocano silence puts between us.
My fondness for kare kare blossomed from this continuous restoration: finding joy in sipping every ounce of sabaw from the crevices of the oxtail bones, ensuring not a single drop goes to waste; craving the harmonious subtle crunch of the green beans with the gentleness of the oxtail fat; finding pleasure in the balance of sweetness of the peanut butter with the saltiness of the bagoong; tactfully using the last bit of eggplant and rice to help soak up then push the last warm bite onto the spoon, leaving nothing but a golden-stained plate.
In addition to its ability to dissipate family drama, the history of the peanut-based stew also serves as a metaphor to the Filipino diaspora, moving and transforming as it traveled with its creators, many of whom were driven by the longing and search for home in the process.
What is kare kare?
Without standardizing its list of ingredients (shameless plug: check out our issue on adobo standardization), the most common ingredients found in kare kare are oxtail, green beans, bokchoy, eggplant, and either peanut butter or ground peanuts to make its soup base. It is most commonly served with rice and either bagoong or alamang.
While the kare kare translation is so broad, it leaves room for innovation and variation. Also considering there are currently 11-12 million Filipinos in the diaspora (which accounts for 10% of the country’s population), there truly is no one way to make kare kare.
These are the top 5 regions with the largest Filipino populations across the diaspora:
United States: 4,089,570 (2019)
Saudi Arabia: 938,490 (2018)
Canada: 837,130 (2016)
United Arab Emirates: 679,819 (2013)
Japan: 325,000 (2020)
Even within these countries, renditions of the recipe may as well even be different across states and even counties.
Origin stories
To coincide with kare kare’s broad translation, the fiesta favorite comes with a bit of complicated history. Here are three potential origin stories:
It originated in Pampanga.
Within Pampanga, there are actually two narratives of kare kare’s origins, both of which vary depending on who you ask. For most Pampanga natives, they are content with the narrative that the dish came from their region, which is known as the “culinary capital of the Philippines.” Kapampangan cuisine is known for its rich foods, including sisig, lechon, chicharon, tocino, and tabang talangka to name a few.
The second narrative older Kapampangans tell is that the original kare kare recipe was created by the Moro of Indonesian descent, “then fine-tuned by their Kapampangan ancestors.” The initial creation known as kari bore a greater resemblance to Sri Lankan fish curry or Thai fish curry: a mudfish stew with ginger, turmeric, lemongrass, key lime peel, and safflower. However, aside from its name, even if this origin story does ring true, the original dish is far from the kare kare recipe we know today.
It was transformed by the Tagalogs.
The second origin story is a continuation of the first. When the Kapampangans began selling their kari in Manila, especially to homesick clientele, Tagalogs caught wind and began to sell kari themselves. However, they struggled to replicate it due to certain ingredients being inaccessible. The substitute with the biggest impact was safflower, which was replaced with cinnabar from achiote seeds. This recipe change caused other spices to be left out of the process. The dish was then dubbed ‘kari-kari’ “meaning, it’s like kari but it’s not kari— a poor imitation.” This then helps to support the claim that it was indeed the Tagalogs who invented the kare kare that we know today.
It was transformed by the Sepoys.
The third origin story states that kare kare came from Indian soldiers or Sepoys (Indian riflemen under Queen Victoria’s service), from Southern India who settled in the Philippines in 1762, after the British occupation of Manila and Cavite.
Most of the Sepoys, who settled in Cainta located east of Manila, created the recipe to help ease their homesickness. Similar to the Tagalogs’ origin story, they were forced to improvise one of their curry dishes from home due to the lack of ingredients. They used achiote and peanuts in place of original curry spices, goat and carabao to substitute lamb and mutton, and also introduced serving the dish with bagoong. Their new rendition of the dish was called kari-kaari, curry, and then eventually kare kare.
Kare kare for the body and soul
Upon learning about the origins of kare kare, two points that resonated most were the forced transformation due to limited access to ingredients and the desire to recreate it to remedy homesickness. While doing “research” for this piece (aka eating kare kare), I found myself using my mom’s recipe as a way to measure how much I enjoyed it. How similar was this version of kare kare to the one I grew up with? Which version brought back similar feelings of comfort, nostalgia, and of home?
Coinciding with these questions were thoughts of how it was best to only have it in moderation. I was reminded of the lesson to treat food as medicine. While I do whole-heartedly agree with this in terms of one’s physical health, what happens when those restricted foods are medicine for the soul? I found myself struggling with this across nearly all Filipino dishes, which use animal products and are often laden with salt and grease. In our culture, we often guiltily laugh about food as the only way our parents express love and affection. What happens then when food is the only shared language you have with your family?
One approach to attempt navigating this balance would be the use of healthier ingredients. In our conversation with Manila-based, Filipino chef Astig Vegan RG Enriquez, we wanted to know how she is able to strike this balance. We were also curious to learn more about her vision: that “Filipino food can be vegan, healthy, and delicious without losing its soul.”
Having become vegan after taking a nutrition class in college, RG grew up eating traditional Filipino food. When asked how becoming vegan has changed her relationship with food, she shared that she actually became closer to Filipino culture because of the need to take a deeper dive in the exploration of flavors and selecting ingredients.
“When I wanted to become vegan, I was debating whether this would make me feel less Filipino because then I would have to give up the food of my childhood, the food that brought me back to nostalgia, comfort food, and thoughts of my hometown. It was a treat for me to have Filipino food because it reminded me of home. I thought I had to choose one over the other. But the ironic part was that [choosing to be vegan] brought me closer to Filipino culture. Before I became vegan, all I wanted was just to eat Filipino food, I didn’t care much about the recipe or how it was made.”
During her exploration in recreating each Filipino dish, she studies the traditional practices and nuances of the dish. This ultimately makes her feel more connected to her culture and roots. She shared that through this process she “felt more Filipino than ever before.”
Of all her recipes, RG reveals her take on kare kare was the most transformative and representative of her work through Astig Vegan:
“It’s a combination of the traditional/familiar, and the new approach.”
The use of banana blossom, ground rice, and peanuts are representative of the traditional, while the use of vegan shrimp paste, tofu, and snow fungus represent the new.
“When you taste it, it’s reminiscent. Even with a new approach, it’s going to attempt to bring you back to the classic, which is representative of what Astig Vegan is all about. It can be the best of both worlds, it can be vegan and an homage to your roots.”
Kare kare’s evolution in the Filipino diaspora
As our recipes change and evolve with us, it’s important to recognize the privilege we have in being able to document these evolutions. We have the privilege now of being able to record our history and document what kare kare is at present day. Like kare kare, part of the culture of Filipino diaspora is to continuously evolve and transform alongside the cultures of the countries we reside in. In our documentation, we also recognize another privilege of having greater accessibility to ingredients in ordering online, as well as having the means of researching where to find certain ingredients. Because so many past historical documents are lacking, recording our own recipes can help tell our stories, and can serve as resources for future generations.
Although having several origin stories gives kare kare a sort of mystical charm, the unsolved pieces of our cuisine does raise an uneasiness in the uncertainty of our history. What we mean to say is, though you may not think so, we all play a role in culinary preservation. In documenting our history —through whatever medium we feel most comfortable with— future generations will then be able to trace the evolution (or lack thereof) of a recipe over time, as well as other dishes that evolve from it, while mapping and connecting it to historical events in certain countries. This clarity connects the diaspora and brings greater understanding with one another.
Upon researching and writing this piece, I too began my own pursuit of home in the process. In every bowl of kare kare I ate, I was able to find a sense of belonging that I so craved, and each time became curious about the future of the golden stew that has never failed to bring me home.
Let’s do this thing!
Inspired (and a little frustrated honestly) by the uncertainty of kare kare’s origins, we’d like to start documenting the ingredients that our community uses in their kare kare! All questions are optional, but we would appreciate it if you could answer as many of them as you can. Please share with loved ones. Thank you in advance for your time, for reading, and for supporting!
Credits
A special thank you to Astig Vegan RG Enriquez for taking the time to speak with us about her work and the vegan community in the Philippines. You can find her blog and kare kare recipe through this link and follow her on Instagram at @AstigVegan.