AVANT GARDENER
Over the weekend I attended a Harvest Dinner co-presented by WOFEX’s CSR arm and Sanko Plastics, featuring dishes from Chef Waya Araos-Wijangco and Gilbert Lee.
“Harvest Dinners are a small gathering of different members of the food service industry and stakeholders for the agri-food chain to get together over food from different regions sourced directly from farmers and fisherfolk and interpreted by different chefs,” said Harold V. Lu, Special Project Lead for WOFEX’s CSR. “This began with the initiative of Jonathan Co of [Sanko] Plastic when he brought together people who focused on ecological sustainability. The idea clicked that we should do the same to bridge the many gaps in the agri-food sector.”
Dubbed “The Summer Bounty Dinner,” the dishes were made with ingredients from Benguet and seafood from BARMM, all freshly picked and caught and directly sourced from farmers and fishers. How freshly caught? Chef Waya shared how she needed a 30-45 kilo marlin for a 200 pax dinner so she asked her contact in BARMM (who also supplied the seafood for the Harvest Dinner) to procure one for her. After four hours, her supplier received word that the fishers she worked with had caught a 44 kilo marlin that only took one or two days to get to Manila.
“If we can make that kind of connection and replicate it nationwide, can you imagine the kind of benefits we can bring directly to the fishery? Also all the vegetables… We’ve been working with the Benguet farmers, connecting them directly to the market para wala nang middlemen. For the past three years that we’ve done that, a lot of the farmers in Benguet have reported increases in income from 1,000-3,000 percent in one year,” Araos-Wijangco shared.
“That’s the kind of difference things like this make. We’ve done this harvest dinner five times. Every month. And what’s interesting about these harvest dinners is we get people like you to talk about how we can improve this system and how we can push the envelope further and forward and let’s do this in our lifetime.”
The dinner was composed of mahi mahi kinilaw with coconut milk and cherry tomatoes, the fish caught fresh from Basilan just a few days before.
Grilled cuttlefish salad on a bed of arugula with dried biya, cherry tomatoes and radish from Benguet, mangoes, and pomelo served with a mango vinaigrette. The biya added a crunchy texture and bursts of saltiness to each bite, in contrast to the sweetness of the cherry tomatoes.
Superlux Tom Yam made with shrimp, clam, and crab broth and filled with whole shrimp, cherry tomatoes, clams, and herbs. Part soup, part stew, the broth had a full flavor reminiscent of the sea.
There was also black laksa paella cooked with crab, shrimp, clams, and what Araos-Wijangco called other “good things.” The squid-ink flavored rice topped with seafood were layers upon layers of flavor, from the seafood’s light char to the rice’s deep umami.
There was also grouper, snapper, and barramundi, also all from Basilan, wrapped in banana leaves, grilled, and served with sambal. Grilled fish is always delicious, particularly when it’s fresh. Dessert was a mini cake made from Davao’s famous Malagos chocolate. There were also cocktails from Toma Mnl.
“The attendees are members of the food service industry, social enterprise founders, chefs and some of the farmers and fisherfolk themselves as we seek to include them in the conversation - literally and figuratively,” Lu explained.
“It provides a venue for discovery for all sides which opens doors not only for markets to open but solutions to problems which no one group or person can monopolize. It is the proverbial bridging of many gaps for farm to table to become the norm with organized farmers and fisherfolk being the ones connecting directly with the market.”
Good food aside, I had a great time meeting new people from different parts of the agriculture industry, all of whom I shall be writing about in the future. What everyone had in common was the desire to support Filipino agriculture and its players. Everyone works toward the day when Filipino farmers and fishers aren’t automatically thought of as one of the poorest elements of society, but one of the most productive, progressive, and wealthy.
This isn’t just lip service. When I asked one of the people I met, a DA Young Farmers Challenge awardee, why, after witnessing her parents give up farming for 20 years in order to raise their family, she decided to go back, she said, “Because I can make money.”
Here’s to more dinners that bring stakeholders together for conversation and collaboration toward an equitably food secure nation. And here’s to more Filipino farmers, fishers, and other industry stakeholders making good money while feeding the Filipino people.