A UST Communication Arts alumna has received an honorable mention at the 22nd Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award for a piece featuring the Boljoon cookies of Cebu.
Kirsten Nicole Tengco’s “Boljoon’s Baked Labor of Love” was one of the four works awarded an honorable mention.
Tengco described the cookies her great-grandmother made for the town of Boljoon, Cebu not as a family recipe, but something greater.
“It’s not a family recipe. I do think it’s much more special than that. It belongs to the town, to Boljoon itself,” Tengco told The Flame.
Through her family’s long ties with the town, she recounted Boljoon as a “town on the way,” one surrounded by tourist hotspots like Alcoy and Oslob.
Tengco described the Boljoon cookies as similar to butter cookies, which they often pair with coffee or hot chocolate.
“We’ve just named them Boljoon cookies, in all honesty, but the locals simply call them cookies. They’re close to butter cookies in nature, but have a smoky, slightly salty taste that makes the flavor far more interesting than being sweet,” she said.
Tengco’s winning essay narrated the laborious process of making the Boljoon cookies a month ahead of the local festivities and the shared experience of the townsfolk biting into their first Boljoon cookie in November.
To write the essay, she and her family reached out to the local bakers of Boljoon to get a copy of the recipe.
“They contacted our relatives from Boljoon to ask local bakers for the recipe, and they were happy to provide me with it. It made the piece even more special, as I felt like I was honoring Boljoon, too,” she said.
The article was Tengco’s first venture into food writing. She began writing fantasy novels, but later transitioned to journalism and opinion pieces on social issues. Her beginnings as a food essayist began with Doreen Fernandez Gamboa, a pioneer in food writing in the Philippines.
“There are so many things that can be said in between ingredients. And I found that in “Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture,” and the rest of [Fernandez’s] work, and I wanted to be part of it,” Tengco added.
Tengco graduated cum laude in 2018. She has contributed essays to publications such as The Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philstar.com and currently works in communications under a government agency.
This year’s Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award, which carried the theme “Minatamis and Sweet Merienda Staples,” gathered a record-high of 75 entries.
The tilt was created in 2002 in honor of Fernandez, the dean of Philippine food writing, to encourage new writers to preserve Filipino cuisine through the written word.
Fernandez, who passed away in 2002, authored many collections including Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture and Palayok: Philippine Food Through Time, On Site, and In the Pot. F
