Chocolate Meat
Written by Micah Dulos
Standing on my tippy toes, I’d stand near my mom as her arm stirred a wooden spoon back and forth. Seven-year-old me was always piqued in interest by her cooking, at the time believing it was pure magic—like how Santa Claus always found a way into our house to eat our cookies from time to time. She would smile and tip the pot just a bit to show me.
It was an opaque, brown—almost black—sauce that covered small bits of what looked to be meat. Its aroma—a warming, musky scent with hints of vinegar and slow-cooked pork—filled the air. It wasn’t a sour and almost spicy smell like my mom’s sinigang, or even a sweet yet savory concoction like my dad’s adobo. The dish was daunting, to say the very least—but I remember, despite it being years ago, my mom nicknamed it “chocolate meat,” because of course, what child could possibly resist chocolate?
Having it served in front of me, plated with a side of rice, its thick, dark stew coated the white grains. At seven years old, I never questioned it too much, knowing that what my mom had made me was most likely going to be decent. I stirred my spoon, watching as the small white grains of rice disappeared, coated in its dark, thick sauce. The first bite was unfamiliar; it was a deep and heavy, almost grainy taste. Although it was different from my sour and sweet cuisines, I felt intrigued. It wasn’t quite comfort or a homey feeling just yet—it was curiosity.
Learning how it was made was scary, to say the least, as who knew vinegar, pork liver, blood, and kidneys could make such an interesting taste? These were commonly discarded parts—pieces of the body meant to be thrown away or forgotten in the classic American kitchen. But no, my kitchen was a Filipino kitchen, a cultivation of my parents’ struggles and love for culture, spread out in a 10×10 room. It was a place where love and curiosity thrived in this family.
In dinuguan, there was no attempt at hiding the ugliness, no attempt to hide the struggle or truth the ingredients held. As my mom stirs the dark substance in the pan, we are reminded of my country’s past struggles and resilience, for what was one man’s trash was the Philippines’ treasured ingredients. Its beautifulness never shines through until a person jumps the gap to taste it. And maybe that’s why it stayed with me—because somewhere between the “chocolate meat” lie from my mom and the truth I eventually learned about its ingredients, I realized that some of the most important things in life begin as something ugly, discarded, misunderstood, and deeply human.
While I sit at a table writing this, after scoring one of the worst academic semesters of my life, I hear my mother’s rhythmic thud of the knife against the cutting board in the room beside me.
No longer standing on my tippy toes, I step into the kitchen, the wooden planks cold under my feet. My mom, much shorter than me now, greets me with a smile as a familiar vinegar aroma hits my nose– it’s dinuguan.
I am home.
