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MANILA, Philippines – While we have a treasure trove of traditional Filipino cookbooks — from Doreen Fernandez’s Tikim to Nora Daza’s Let’s Cook with Nora — new voices have been emerging within the Filipino culinary scene.
Home cooks, bakers, and chefs from around the world are reshaping Filipino cuisine to embrace modern cooking trends and novel twists, while infusing their multi-cultural backgrounds into the dishes, yet still maintaining the true essence of Filipino cooking.
If you’re looking for inspiration in the kitchen or want to try cooking for the first time, here are a few modern Filipino cookbooks to learn from and get the creative juices going!
I Am a Filipino: And This is How We Cook by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad
Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad’s I Am a Filipino: And This is How We Cook had previously made its way onto Taste Atlas’ “150 Most Iconic Cookbooks of 2023” list, highlighting Philippine cuisine’s diverse cultural influences and offering in-depth explanations of the different regional delicacies found all across the archipelago.
Ponseca, a Filipino restaurateur, cookbook author, and culinary influencer, was a James Beard Award nominee in 2019 for the cookbook. She co-authored the book with Trinidad, and it was nominated in the International Books category.
These include classically sour cooking with vinegar like adobo and kinilaw (fresh seafood cured in vinegar), soups and vegetables, Chinese-influenced pansit (noodles) and dumplings, fried and salty street foods, merienda treats like empanada, tomatoes and tamales of Spanish and Mexican influence, dishes that reflect the infusion of American food culture, and the book even dedicates a chapter to the spicy and burnt coconut-flavored, Arab-inflected food of Muslim Mindanao.
Whether you’re in need of a recipe for a common Filipino dish or a specific regional specialty, I Am a Filipino is for anyone looking to explore the complex culinary lore of Filipino cooking and cuisines.
GochiSo Sarap: Homestyle Japanese Dishes by Daisuke Suzuki and Reggie Aspiras
On the topic of fusion, chefs Daisuke Suzuki and Reggie Aspiras’ GochiSo Sarap: Homestyle Japanese Dishes is a cookbook containing 30 Japanese recipes made with a Pinoy twist, introducing a Filipino flavor dimension to everyday Japanese dishes.
Among these are guava sinigang — a Japanese take on the famously sour Filipino soup where ripe guava counters the sourness — and chicken teriyaki reinterpreted for the Filipino palette.
The recipes in this book are easy to replicate at home! GochiSo Sarap is for home cooks who love Japanese food with creative twists.
In 2024, Chef Reggie Aspiras was given recognition by the Japanese Embassy for strengthening ties between the Philippines and Japan by way of culinary cultural exchange.
Filipinx: Heritage Recipes from the Diaspora by Angela Dimayuga and Ligaya Mishan
Angela Dimayuga and Ligaya Mishan’s Filipinx: Heritage Recipes from the Diaspora contains 100 recipes that more than four million Filipino immigrants brought with them when they left for better economic opportunities, and then passed down to their children. For the Filipino diaspora in the US, like Dimayuga and Mishan, these dishes have come to signify “home.”
In Filipinx, the recipes offered range from fresh spins on classic Filipino dishes — like adobo with added coconut milk, or bistek using ribeye steak cuts coated in butter and a drizzling of lemon and orange juice — to more involved takes on ultra-processed foods like SPAM.
With its very detailed step-by-step instructions, Filipinx is beginner-friendly and inviting.
The New Filipino Kitchen: Stories and Recipes from Around the Globe by Jacqueline Chio-Lauri
The New Filipino Kitchen: Stories and Recipes from Around the Globe, edited by Jacqueline Chio-Lauri, compiles recipes from expat Filipinos who, when they left the country, took their favorite dishes with them, and through the years made small changes to suit the new environment or context.
Among them are Bocuse d’Or Europe winner Christian André Pettersen, and Fil-Am White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford. who retired after 29 years in 2024.
The 30 recipes in The New Filipino Kitchen include sinigang with salmon and mixed shellfish, tortang alimango (crab omelet), sous vide fried chicken, another interpretation of chicken adobo with coconut milk but this time with also added champorado (chocolate rice porridge), chef Pettersen’s take on crispy pata, habichuelas (tomato stew with beans and chorizo), silvanas, and ube halaya semifreddo (Italian ice cream-like dessert).
The New Filipino Kitchen is both a practical introduction to Filipino cooking, and a useful addition to a seasoned chef’s bookshelf. The New Filipino Kitchen had previously made its way to the San Francisco Chronicle’s favorite cookbooks list in 2018.
Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed by Abi Balingit
A bestselling baking book by Filipino-American food blogger Abi Balingit, and filled with 75 different dessert recipes, Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed draws from both Filipino and Western food cultures, often combining the two in new and imaginative ways.
Mayumu means “sweet” in eight major Philippine languages, and the sweetness this cookbook offers ranges from the more Filipino-leaning recipes — vanilla bean cassava cake with White Rabbit, ube macapuno lava cake, corn maja blanca bars, red velvet silvanas, mini salabat cakes — to more Western ones — lychee madeleines, Pacific Beach pie, Curly Tops rugelach — to bold fusions of the two.
These include the viral adobo chocolate chip cookies, kare-kare cookies, sampalok Tajín snickerdoodles, mango float cream puffs, raspberry & chamoy pichi-pichi, and many more!
Kayumanggi: A Kaleidoscope of Flavors and Traditions by Jam Melchor
Hot off the press is chef Jam Melchor’s recently launched recipe book, Kayumanggi: A Kaleidoscope of Flavors and Traditions. An homage to our rich culinary heritage, this cookbook highlights indigenous ingredients and methods, and heirloom dishes.
Published and printed with the help of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), it celebrates Filipino identity as reflected in our gastronomic traditions.
Kayumanggi features over 150 traditional recipes with Melchor’s own spins, including lumpiang sariwa, misua patola, mechado, dinuguan, kalderetang baka, and sans rival.
Instructional and easy to understand, Kayumanggi is beginner-friendly, for those just starting out, but also offers insight into our local dishes’ traditions and geographies, agricultural practices, and oral and written histories, for those interested and want to learn more. Kayumanggi outlines our culinary history from prehistoric to Spanish, Chinese, and American influences, also delving briefly into the food traditions of the Muslim South and indigenous peoples.
The books on this list celebrate our cuisine’s vast diversity, highlighting adaptability rather than striving for “authenticity.” It champions tradition through innovation and preserves cultural identity by letting it flow, change, and evolve. – Bea Gatmaytan/Rappler.com
Bea Gatmaytan is a Rappler intern studying Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman.
