The Golden Memory of Piaparan

The very first thing that I can remember is the smell. It was a smell that lingered in the air like a hymn, blending itself within the morning light that filtered through the slats of wood that made up our kitchen. It was pungent with sakurab, rich with ginger, and burning with chilies. My Inakulay stood before the stove, her back straight, her hands firm. She moved with a poise I could never detect, as though every step was practiced by generations. Her hands carried the weight of tradition, and I, hungry-eyed boy, knew that I was about to see something that was not only food but memory itself.

She was cooking manok a piaparan. To describe it merely as chicken in coconut milk would be simplistic. Piaparan was chicken and yet more. It was the flavor of sea and land, the aroma of hills and woods, the shadow of voices long past but not forgotten. My Inakulay referred to it as “pegk’n sa pakaragyan.” Food in celebrations. But in her hands, it was also the food of remembrance.

I saw her start with the palapa. She ground the sakurab, ginger, and chilies in her mortar, the pestle cracking to the beat of a heartbeat. The air reeked with its raw smell. My eyes watered but I did not blink. She glanced at me once and smiled, curling the edge of her lips, as if to tell me, this is how fire turns to flavor. The palapa was always the starting point, always the catalyst that would bring life to the piaparan.

Now came the chicken, chopped in neat slices, sliding into the pot where the palapa crackled in oil. She poured the coconut milk, thick and white, a river that translated the sound of fire into the song of simmer. Gradually, the turmeric colored the broth with its hue, turning the milk into a sea of gold. The kitchen was converted to a color as if sunlight had been trapped in her pot. The piaparan was becoming gold, and I imagined sultans, crowns and torogans, although we were merely in a little wooden home. My grandmother was silent, but I was certain that the color of something spoke beyond its loveliness. It was royalty, not of crowns, but of lineage.

She picked the chicken pieces out of the broth, their skin drenched in golden colors. She then reached for the grated coconut. She browned it slowly, stirring with a wooden spoon, until the shreds became crisp and brown, their sweetness rising to greet the savory aroma of the broth. This was the papar, the last gem in the crown of piaparan. The roasted coconut stuck to the chicken like a second skin, richer, deeper, and alive with the scent of the fire.

I sat quietly, the boy that I was, not wanting to talk in case I broke the moment. Every noise counted. The crack of the coconut. The quiet bubbling of the soup. The scrape of her spoon on the pan. Even the movement of her breath sounded as though it was part of the recipe. She was cooking more than that. She was infusing memory into food, teaching me through unspoken words that land and people survive through the food they leave behind.

As she placed the complete piaparan on the table, the dish radiated. Golden, smelling, alive. The aroma filled the entire house, and I swear even the trees outside leaned in to smell it. The initial bite was an explosion, a flame ignited on the tongue that burned through into the soul. The palapa imparted to it a heat that was cutting but not brutal. Coconut milk mellowed the burn, covering it in sweetness. The turmeric had the taste of earth and the roasted coconut brought a depth like the voice of the elder speaking in a tale. It was a flavor that was not just good but truthful. It was flavored with our land, our rivers, our sun. It was flavored with home.

I sat with my Inakulay eating slowly, her eyes still and filled with memory. She rarely said much about the old times, but I knew that with each spoonful she was sampling her own mother’s kitchen, her own childhood, her own heritage. And there I sat, opposite her, sampling the same dish, feeling the same golden heat on my tongue, and wordlessly I understood we were tied by more than blood. We were tied by piaparan.

Days have gone by and the kitchen is not the same without her. The mortar remains, the wooden spoon still in its corner, but the hands that gave them life are no more. I have attempted to make piaparan myself, but my hands do not know their way with the same sureness. I fear that I will never succeed. Every time I attempt, I fear that I am pursuing something too holy to be grasped. But there are times, when the coconut milk turns golden and the roasted coconut lets out its smoke, that I sense her beside me. And I know that piaparan is not perfection. It is memory, keeping alive the strand that binds me to her, to my folk, to the land that nurtured us.

The golden piaparan, the color of royalty, is more than food on a plate. It is our table’s crown, our kitchens’ treasure, the wordless story we tell. To me, it is the recollection of a boy observing his grandmother stir coconut into a dish that lived longer than she did. It is the reminder that although she is gone, her taste still lingers, her memory bubbling over in every pot of piaparan I have the courage to prepare.

And so when I think of her, I think not only of her face, her voice, her hands, but also of the golden dish that shone like sunlight on our little kitchen. It is not just chicken. It is not just a meal. It is manok a piaparan, golden memory, royalty of our plate. It is my Ina Kulay’s gift, and it will be remembered as long as I keep eating it, as long as I keep recalling that the golden piaparan is not merely a dish, but the flavor of home itself.