Home-grown rice, which is the staple in most provinces, tastes bland. Hence the penchant for strong flavors.
For a Filipino, a meal is not a meal without rice. Besides being the sacrificial cereal for every meal, rice is also ground into flour to make bibingka and puto, pounded flat to make pinipig, and even crushed, dyed and fried to make colorful decorations come fiesta time in Quezon.
Doreen G. Fenandez, food columnist and researcher, wrote about food and the Filipino: "Food punctuates the Filipino's life, is a touchstone to his memories a measure of relationships with nature, with fellow men, with the world." Christmas for a Filipino, for instance, is more than just trees and carols; it is bibingka after the midnight mass, quezo de bola for the Christmas dinner, ensaimada for breakfast on Christmas morn. Since the cuisine is "drawn directly from nature thoroughly explored and imaginatively used," (we eat anything--shark, octupus, shrimp, crab, roots, leaves, trunks, weeds, flowers, snakes, iguanas, field rats, locusts), Filipino food is therefore symbolic of the peasants' closeness with and dependence on the environment.
Ms. Fernandez also describes the relationship between cook and diner, unlike in other countries, as that of equals. In France, for example, to ask for ketchup is to gravely insult the chef. In the Philippines, the chef fully expects the diner to season the food to suit his tastes with soy sauce, fich sauce (patis), bagoong (small shrimps or fish preserved in brine), or anything else, thereby participating in the creation of the dish.
As mentioned before, Philippine cuisine is a reflection of history.
One can see the various influences of the foreigners who have passed through,
as conquerors or traders, and who have played a part in forming the mational
identity of the Filipino.