28/11/2020
History of Chicken Relleno:
A Philippine Tradition
Before the Spanish regime began in the Philippine islands from 1521 to 1898, the chicken and the pig were used by Filipinos as ritual food for ancestral worship. The animals were slaughtered and offered to the spirits, and then cooked and lavishly eaten by all.
Today when you ask a Filipino what he thinks of as special food, chances are he’ll say the pig and the chicken. He’ll describe to you the lechon , a whole pig crisply roasted on a spit rotating over hot glowing embers, and rellenong manok (stuffed chicken), a b***d whole chicken stuffed with some kind of forcemeat, whole sausages and hard-cooked eggs.
Influenced by Spanish cultures that also brought other European cuisines to the islands, Filipino cooks have long been preparing the festive chicken relleno, which may very well have been a modification of the French galantine of chicken. The galantine is a completely b***d bird that is stuffed and rolled into a cylindrical shape, wrapped in muslin and poached in a rich jellylike stock.
Old Philippine cookbooks include recipes of the French galantine and the Filipino chicken relleno, which is not completely b***d. Rather than cylindrically shaped, it is molded back into the shape of the bird, with the bones of the wings and drumsticks retained.
Like the French recipe, stuffings for the relleno included anything from chicken to veal, pork, pickled tongue, ham, truffles, bacon or foie gras. All the fattening and almost prohibitively rich foods one can imagine. Even the taste of the chicken itself had to be rich and special, its meat extra tender. Around the 1930s, a chicken called ipitan was made available for cooking. In contrast to the free-range chicken, the corn-fed young hen was raised in a cage so small that it could only sit and stand. That way the bird didn’t build muscles that would toughen it.
The many versions of the chicken relleno today reflect economic history, too. The stuffed Filipino bird has come a long way from the Spanish elite times of imported European truffles, pate de fois gras , cheeses, sausage and wine. Boning was a cinch those days when there were a number of native servants and cooks to do all sorts of tedious chores, such as the meticulous boning of chicken necks which were to be stuffed with chicken liver, truffles and ham for a special soup dish popular in those days.
-Los Angeles Times
