Lechon Diva's Degustacion Boasts Chicken Cooked Katipunero-Style
Her chicken cooked inside the bark of a banana tree will blow you away.
(SPOT.ph) To Manila’s private dining crowd, Dedet dela Fuente of Pepita’s Kitchen is “Lechon Diva,” famous for the degustacions at her Makati home. She’s even more famous for her crispy-skinned roasted pig stuffed with rice of different flavors: binagoongan, truffle, sisig, taba ng talangka with chorizo, Canadian bacon, and a combination of roasted garlic, tanglad and chilis. Her customers include VIPs and show biz royalty like Dingdong Dantes and wife Marian Rivera; and then there’s Sharon Cuneta, of course, a known lechon fanatic.
Dedet has likewise served her stuffed lechon to culinary superstars like Adam Richman, Martha Stewart, and Anthony Bourdain—this last one even had the Pepita’s binagoongan lechon de leche to-go the last time he left Manila.
The last five years
For the past five years however, Dedet’s diva-hood was on a break. She was in Canada to be with her daughters who were starting a life there. When she missed doing her degustacions, she would occasionally prepare her elaborate dinners for friends. “Pero mas Pagoda Philippines ako abroad,” she recalls, using the gayspeak for “tired.” “I chop and steam and cook. Ako lahat. Mag-isa. Feeling Cinderella.”
For a while, Dedet didn’t feel like she had it in her to go back to her degustacion dinners. Before Covid, she’s done a Dinner at Tiffany’s theme, where her daughter Lileya, fan of Audrey Hepburn movies, got to play “Moon River” on the harp. She’s done a Hayop na Degustacion, which used meats from “sari-saring” animals. It took awhile before she could find that spark of inspiration for her latest and eighth degustacion theme. Ironically, it all started with something old—her daughter suggested she include past favorites from her repertoire, like her Crab Sipit dripping in a luscious sauce of crab fat and other savory goodness, and her Hiplog, a piece of plump hipon meant for dipping in a rich salted egg sauce.
Also read: 10 Best Potluck Dishes to Order from Makati's Private Kitchens
These two, among a few more oldies but goodies, indeed make it to her new degustacion called Lecheng Sarap, which puts together her hits from past menus with new dishes that build on traditional Filipino cooking techniques. It also uses quite a bit of coco de leche, or coconut milk, hence the “leche” in the theme title. And, yes, you’ll likely blurt out “Leche” by the end of the meal—or at different points during the dinner—because of just how good the food is. Dedet’s degustacions have always been decadent, and always a discovery of new ways to experience Filipino flavors.
Lolas and Katipuneros
“Filipino cuisine is living history,” she tells a group of media people at a preview dinner for Lecheng Sarap. “From the resilience of our Katipuneros to the wisdom of our lolas, we have always been very smart in transforming the simplest ingredients to something very flavorful.”
The culmination of Dedet’s dinners is always the lechon, which in this latest one is stuffed with binagoongan rice—the very first stuffed lechon she made back when she was starting. The showstoppers of this dinner, however, happen—because they’re events that implore us to leave our chairs and gather around Dedet to watch her “present” said showstoppers at another table—earlier in the evening. Standing behind a modest rectangular table like the Mother of All That’s Good and Giving, she introduces each dish to us and walks us through their making, complete with props, ingredients or the unique cooking tools she used to achieve her desired results.
The first major dish is a halaan soup, which is Manila clams cooked in coconut water using a bamboo pole. The inner skin of the bamboo adds flavor and a lovely aroma to the broth—which also has ginger and lemongrass. It’s like binakol with clams, says Dedet, which she’s long thought of doing since seeing Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan cook binakol using kawayan at their Purple Yam in Malate many years back. It so happened Dedet was in Bulacan recently and chanced upon a wealth of bamboo poles for sale—a rare sighting in Manila—so she bought a ton.
The Bulacan trip also inspired the second highlight of the Lecheng Sarap degustacion: chicken cooked in saha, or the trunk of a banana. According to Jimmy Corpus who was the guide at the Bulacan tour Dedet joined, it was how the Katipuneros would cook their food during the revolution—inside the barks, sans the smoke, thus keeping the rebels safe from being found by the enemy. Dedet wrapped her chicken in galangal leaves from her garden, throwing in kaffir, lemongrass, “pineapples for a little sweetness and sampalok para Pinoy na Pinoy.” The bundle is put inside the saha and placed over fiery charcoal for two hours. The result is a uniquely earthy but clean-tasting, sweet and tender chicken that is unlike any other chicken you’ve tasted. Dedet calls it Rebel’s Chicken.
Her third surprise for the evening is an inasal fried rice steamed inside a suha, like Pineapple Fried Rice except the fruit in this one is used not just as gimmicky container but as cooking vessel. “Think of a fruit where we can put fried rice,” Dedet’s daughter Llora suggested, and so mother obeyed—and went above and beyond. Dedet thought of suha because it’s a fruit she associates with her mother, and suha’s natural tartness would be the ingenious sub for the suka in the inasal. It took Dedet eight to 10 tries before she got the formula right—because steam the fried rice inside the fruit a little longer and it will be inedible. She tells us to consume only a little of it in the dinner—sprinkled with suha bits, toasted garlic and inasal oil—because there’s that binagoongan rice from the lechon waiting at the end.
In between her big paandars are smaller but no less delightful paandars: her balut salpicao, a donut/beignet-like snack packed with the essence of the Pinoy delicacy; a laing okoy; her Bite of Joy—crispy Chickenjoy-style skin drenched in sweet spaghetti sauce; bulalo pizza; and a beautiful salad composed of dilis, cashew nuts, beans and pansit-pansitan with two types of gata dressing—one infused with pandan essence, the second one darker, charred and given a shot of guava essence. Every bite promises a different flavor but the whole ensemble works like a sweet, well-conducted symphony.
It may have taken awhile for the inspiration to come to Dedet, but when it did, everything fell into place. “The Filipino kitchen continues to evolve,” she says, sharing an insight she confirmed while working on this degustacion. “There are new stories to be told and old dishes to update.” And if we may add—to celebrate.
To book a Pepita's Kitchen private dinner in her Makati residence or yours, contact Pepita's Kitchen at +639178660662.