Bicolano
Bicol cooks in coconut milk and fire — gata and bird's-eye chili in nearly every pot, from blazing Bicol Express to taro-leaf laing.
Bicol Express
Pork simmered in coconut milk with a mountain of long green chilies — Bicol's blazing signature.
View page →Bicol, the southern tail of Luzon, cooks almost everything in gata — coconut milk — and loads it with siling labuyo, the bird's-eye chili. The emblem is Bicol Express, pork stewed creamy and incendiary with mounds of long chilies; beside it sit laing (dried taro leaves in chili coconut milk) and pinangat (taro-leaf parcels of meat or fish), coconut-creamed shark kinunot, and leaf-wrapped sinanglay. Rich, hot and unmistakably green-and-white, it is the spiciest of the Philippine regional cuisines.
Start Here
Pork simmered creamy and fiery in coconut milk with long chilies.
Why start here · Bicol's blazing emblem.
Taro-leaf parcels of meat or fish in coconut milk.
Why start here · Laing's stuffed, parcelled cousin.
The Pantry
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Herbs & Spices
Grains & Staples
Dairy & Fats
Sauces & Condiments
How They Cook
Techniques that define this cuisine
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Kindred Kitchens
Cuisines built on the same signature ingredients
Other regions
Siblings within Filipino — each its own tradition.