How To Cook In A Traditional Philippine Pot Oven

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I asked Vince Cortez for his comments and he said, "I took cars of the turkey, I took care of the dressing. You handle the cookery . . . and that goes for browning, too."

Luckily, before I could agonize over the problem much longer, I was saved by the bell. The power company flashed the lights back on, the refrigerator bucked like a wounded bronco, and the electric oven tingled. Quickly I thrust the turkey into the automatic roaster, flipped the ON switch to broil, and prayed that the current would stay with us long enough to brawn the bird. (It did . . . not just for a while, but for the rest of the night.)

And so the turkey was done to a golden hue . . . but over the dinner table I stoutly defended my palayok oven. Regardless of electricity's virtues, I claimed, there was a lot to be said for the native pot cooker. My argument, of course, was useless. Everyone naturally believed that the primitive device had played only a minor role in putting our meal on the table. The fact that the electric roaster had revived to put just the final tint on the bird made little impression on them.

The truth didn't emerge until three days later, when my wife decided to try her luck with a smaller turkey . . . not in the palayok oven, but in the electric roaster. No American stuffing this time, either. The second bird was filled with chicken dressing (an old family recipe which included Spanish sausage, pork cubes, and spices).

Well, three hours of conking later, the noble bird tasted like chicken, not turkey. And—whereas the pot oven product had sliced as fine and tantalizingly as roast pork—the roaster's version was tough and resisted carving.

To produce this inferior result, the electric roaster had burned approximately $1.80 worth of current to cook the small turkey. My pot oven, in contrast, had needed only about 15 cents' worth of charcoal (and didn't even consume all that) for the larger bird.

I fired up what was left of the charcoal the next day to grill a kilo (a little over 2 pounds) of park chops . . . and, when that job was finished, I still had enough fuel on hand to broil some sweet corn, if there'd been any. There wasn't, unfortunately. Half a hectare (I-1/4 acres) of my farm's corn-with the ears only a few weeks from maturity-had been beaten into terra firma, casualties of the same typhoon that had knocked out our power a few days before. But that's another story.

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