Filipino Cookbooks, Television and the Internet

When Nina Daza Puyat revisited her mother’s Let’s Cook with Nora for a new edition, the task extended far beyond giving the book a fresh cover. Working with editor Cris Abiva, she reconsidered cooking terms, ingredient and product names, procedures and layout, and arranged new food photographs. The familiar covers stayed. Elizabeth Ann Quirino’s 2020 interview captures a revealing tension: the book needed to remain recognisable while its instructions became clearer for another generation of cooks. Source 4

That work sits at the heart of Filipino recipe publishing. A dish known through watching, tasting and repetition must become something a person elsewhere can use. Print, television and the internet each offer different help. They also make the author decide what needs explaining: how much, which ingredient, what texture, whose version and what to do when the reader’s kitchen differs from the one where the recipe began.

The printed record contains several kinds of kitchen

The National Library’s 2025 bibliography records a 1919 Aklat ng pagluluto translated into Tagalog by Rosendo Ignacio from Spanish-language works associated with Europe and the Philippines. It also lists the Singalong-San Andres Women’s Club’s 31-day menu cook book of 1949. Even these catalogue entries reveal different publishing purposes: translating culinary knowledge for another readership and organising meals across a month. A cookbook could be a language bridge, a collective undertaking or a practical planning aid. Source 1

The same bibliography records a 1969 Let’s Cook with Nora as a treasury of Filipino, Chinese and European dishes compiled and kitchen-tested by Nora Daza. The range belongs in the title’s meaning: this was a repertoire for its intended cooks, not a claim that every recipe had one national origin. Kitchen testing was also part of the book’s declared promise. The recipe offered a repeatable starting point alongside the authority of a named compiler. Source 1

A cook’s voice could move between page and screen

Anvil’s catalogue places Nora Daza’s cookbook work beside several other forms of teaching. She wrote for Women’s Magazine, directed the Manila Gas Cooking School, worked with the Great Maya Cookfest and hosted Cooking It Up with Nora. Her daughter Nina later edited Appetite magazine. These careers connected demonstrations, competitions, magazine pages and books; recipe media were already overlapping well before a reader could move between a website and a video with one tap. Source 3

A familiar face and voice could make a printed name feel approachable. The book, in turn, gave a reader something to consult after a demonstration had ended. Those are complementary kinds of instruction: performance conveys manner and confidence, while a page allows a cook to stop, compare quantities and return to an earlier step. The Daza careers show why the history is richer than a sequence in which each new medium simply replaces the previous one. Source 3

An overseas reader changes the publishing question

The University of the Philippines library record for the 1974 Galing-galing credits both Nora and Mariles Daza. It identifies a United States readership and notes publication assistance from Carnation Philippines. Those are modest but useful facts: an overseas audience and commercial support were explicitly part of this book’s presentation. The record does not provide the full recipes, so it cannot establish precisely which ingredients or measurements the authors adapted. Source 2

An intended reader is nevertheless a consequential editorial choice. A book for someone shopping abroad must anticipate a different encounter with the ingredients, even when the desired meal is familiar. Its title and supporting material can tell the reader who is being addressed before the first recipe begins. Co-authorship also matters: remembering the famous name alone would erase Mariles from the work recorded by the library. Source 2

Jennifer Aranas’s The Filipino-American Kitchen makes that audience visible in its very title. Tuttle’s description presents dishes such as duck adobo, green papaya and jicama salad, and lamb casoy, alongside a basics chapter and a shopping guide covering ingredients including palm vinegar, shrimp paste and calamansi. The publisher frames the book as a combination of inherited cooking and the author’s Filipino-American experience. Adaptation is part of the stated project, rather than an accident to be concealed. Source 6

A buying guide changes what a recipe can assume. The reader may recognise a dish but need help identifying a bottle, paste or fruit; another reader may encounter the entire flavour vocabulary for the first time. Explaining the pantry makes the cooking instructions more usable without requiring all readers to have grown up beside the same stove. Source 6

A cookbook can carry people as well as procedures

Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan’s Memories of Philippine Kitchens gives another emphasis to the form. Abrams describes its revised edition through recipes gathered from private kitchens and the Purple Yam menu, accompanied by photographs and stories from the authors and other cooks. A household preparation and a restaurant dish can appear within the same volume while retaining different histories. The surrounding narrative helps the reader understand why a particular recipe was worth recording. Source 7

That approach makes room for more than an idealised finished plate. A photograph can connect food to a person or place; a story can explain who taught the cook or why a flavour matters. The recipe remains a set of instructions, but it also becomes a way of keeping those relationships visible when the dish is cooked far from the people who contributed it. Source 7

Revision is another round of cooking

Quirino’s interview describes the new Nora edition, launched in December 2019, as work on 260 recipes. Nina emphasised testing and identified a concrete adaptation: Virginia Ocampo chiffon cake became cupcakes. Quirino also recalled carrying her mother’s copy to the United States. These details give revision an emotional and practical setting. A cherished book can travel as a family object, while its next edition still requires somebody to cook, assess and rewrite. Source 4

Television makes the cookbook perform again

ABS-CBN’s August 2022 announcement for Casa Daza’s sixth season promised dishes from the new Nora cookbook, including pork afritada, poached fish with hollandaise and beef with spring onions. Another episode would draw on Cooking with Sandy Daza, with shantung pampano and mongo with beef kenchi among the advertised dishes. The programme placed a mother’s and son’s published cooking in the same season. Family continuity was expressed through recipes with names and ingredients, rather than through the surname alone. Source 5

The announcement also specified Metro.Style YouTube availability alongside Metro Channel transmission. The same programme could therefore enter a scheduled broadcast and an online collection. For a learner, replay changes the possibilities of a demonstration: a movement can be revisited or a passage paused while the cooking catches up. A written recipe and a recorded performance can support one another at the worktop. Source 5

A Chicago kitchen becomes a place of instruction

Vanjo Merano’s own account dates Panlasang Pinoy to 2009, when he lived in Chicago’s northern suburbs. He recalls seeking Filipino recipes and finding the available instructions incomplete or confusing. His response was to document dishes himself. He also remembers learning in his mother’s kitchen and running errands to the neighbourhood market. The online project grew from practical cooking experience and the difficulty of finding useful guidance at a distance. Source 8

Merano says that he tests the recipes he publishes and explains techniques that affect the result. That is an author’s statement about his process, not an independent audit, but it makes responsibility identifiable. A reader is receiving Vanjo’s version, with a person available to explain its choices. Search can lead someone to a single dish; the named cook provides a connection to a larger body of work. Source 8

The food blog becomes a working kitchen and a team

Lalaine Manalo’s account of Kawaling Pinoy begins with another practical need. After moving to California in 1990, she learned to cook food she had not needed to prepare for herself in the Philippines. She later worked in food-service management and moved into full-time blogging in May 2016. Her description of the work includes testing recipes and collaborating with photographers and videographers. The seemingly personal page can be the result of several people’s skilled production. Source 9

Manalo also explains that unavailable ingredients sometimes require substitutions and that her recipes reflect her taste. Readers are invited to adapt them and offer feedback. She welcomes troubleshooting while acknowledging the limit of not being physically present in a reader’s kitchen. That is a useful expression of authority: detailed guidance can coexist with recognition that another cook’s equipment, ingredients and decisions may change the outcome. Source 9

A leche-flan page shows what the internet adds

Manalo’s leche-flan page combines a personal introduction with photographs, a video link, a printable recipe, measured ingredients, equipment and separate discussions of caramel, custard and cooking methods. Readers can approach the same dish through several forms of explanation. The page identifies its author and update date, making the recipe a versioned publication rather than a detached paragraph of instructions. Its organisation is part of the teaching. Source 10

The comments expose a precise point of misunderstanding. In December 2024, a reader expected water to be added when making caramel; Manalo replied on 1 January 2025 that the recipe used a dry method. The exchange adds context a silent page cannot provide by itself. It also illustrates why an instruction can be technically intentional yet still leave a reader uncertain. The response clarifies the author’s choice without requiring every household to make flan in the same way. Source 10

The camera can follow the dish back to its maker

Digital food media also move beyond teaching a viewer to reproduce dinner. FEATR’s March 2024 introduction to a Tayabas pinais feature identifies maker Leogin Salvan and a preparation learned from his parents. It names local ingredients, dapdap and camamba, whose declining availability concerned him, and credits people who contributed to the feature. The story places a particular cook and his circumstances beside the dish. Source 11

That shift broadens what counts as useful food knowledge. A searchable recipe may answer how to make something; a maker’s account can explain what makes continued preparation difficult. Recording the food does not by itself solve an ingredient problem, but it can make the problem visible to people who would otherwise see only an appealing finished dish. Source 11

Across these media, the most valuable continuity is the work of explanation. A translator chooses words, an editor revises a procedure, a television cook performs it, a blogger answers a question and a filmmaker records the person who still makes it. The format may change, but a strong recipe keeps a relationship intact: someone has taken responsibility for helping another person understand the food well enough to cook, recognise or value it.