Filipino cuisine

Filipino cooking likes sour and salty at once: vinegar in braises, tamarind in soup, fish sauce on the table beside every dish.

Vinegar occupies the place other cuisines split between lemon and wine. Things are braised, marinated and preserved in it, and there are several Filipino vinegars — from cane, coconut and palm sap.

Three centuries of Spanish rule and half a century of American left their mark, but the base stayed Malay: rice at every meal and patis fish sauce as the principal salt.