Mely Rolls

Often I am asked… from whom did you learn to bake? My requisite response is… not from my mom! However, even more important than teaching me to cook, my mom made it conducive for me to learn-- by giving me cookbooks, buying ingredients, later on pushing the products of my experiments to friends, and now helping out as my adviser and floral arranger. In other words, my mother is my secret weapon. But if I were to trace where I may have inherited culinary DNA, it must have been from LOLA PASAY.

Amelia Valencia Juban, native of Calapan, Mindoro and long-time Pasay resident (thus the monicker), is my paternal grandmother who was a talented cook. Loli had a limitless supply of kitchen gadgets, most of which she would in the end confess to not knowing how to use or operate--- then offer it to me. Now I have all these knick-knacks that I, too, know not to use. In other words, these things simply migrated.

Among the popular repertoire we grew up with, top faves are Pineapple Upside Down Cake (THE ultimate lola-cake), Camote Pie (with peanut or cashew streusel top), Cathedral's Window (gelatin with milk and fruit cocktail), Nilupak (lightly sweetened saba that we as kids fought to mash with an oversized wooden mortar and pestle), and her version of a jelly roll (light and fluffy sponge cake with condensada custard filling). Somehow its that roll that epitomized my beautiful Loli-- classic and simple and comforting. So while she was sick, I promised to learn that recipe and bake it for the family.

Today we laid her to rest.

Every sotanghon guisado will be compared to hers, hot pandesal with butter downed with Coke will always make me think of meriendas in Valhalla, and each of the MELY ROLLS I bake will be a tribute to my Lola Pasay.