EMPANADA (Noun): A crisp bright-orange pastry holding together a feast of grated green papaya, mongo sprouts, longaniza and egg deep fried in oil.

The dipping sauce is the distinctly smoky sukang Iloko spiked with siling labuyo and yet more garlic. It is best paired with a bowl of steaming miki, a thick noodle soup in chicken broth topped with chopped shallots and pork crackling. (As defined by Anonymous, an empanada gourmand.)

A top empanada maker is Gloria Aduana Cocson, founder of Glory’s Empanada of Batac, who was honored with the Gameng Lifetime Achievement Award during the Governor’s Ball recently hosted by Ilocos Norte Gov. Michael M. Keon at Fort Ilocandia Hotel.

Manang Glory, 66, is a native of Barangay Barani in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, born the third of four children of a family of modest means. She attended the Batac Central School and the Batac Rural High School. Early in life, she learned how to make empanada from a sister-in-law, but modified the recipe with a secret flavor that made her empanada a bestseller.

Marrying at 15, Glory expanded her business to take care of a growing brood of four daughters and three sons. Some are now involved in their successful enterprise.

Glory made the rounds of town fiestas celebrated in the towns of Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur, gaining recognition for her brand of empanada. Soon, converts were beating the path to her empanada stall in Batac, making long drives from far-away towns.

Today, Glory’s Empanada on the ground floor of Riverside, right across the Catholic Church of Batac, is one of the busiest in the two-story complex. A separate outlet, along the national highway, also does brisk business selling empanada, with miki (noodles in chicken broth, colored with achuete), which is another Batac specialty.

Preferences

Irene M. Araneta, proud anak ti Batac, likes her regular vegetable empanada malasado, with the egg yolk half-cooked, accompanied by one or two sticks of deep fried or grilled garlic longaniza.

Pastry chef Jill Sandique orders multiple “double-doubles” which is double egg, double longaniza—for that ultimate cholesterol kick.

Claude Tayag and friends can’t get enough of their “empanada dreamin.” The dipping sauce of sukang Iloko, pungent and savory with siling labuyo and garlic, is supposed to assuage the onslaught of cholesterol into the system, but not by much.

There are several variants: vegetarian (plain without longaniza, optional egg); special (with longaniza and egg); double longaniza, double egg, the aforementioned double-double (let your imagination run wild—I have heard someone order for all longaniza with egg, no vegetables!). For dainty city appetites, a “genteel” 5-inch version has been developed, resulting in people wolfing down three in succession.

For the true empanada addict (and there are quite a number), the secret is in the longaniza, and ultimately, the pork. Batac longaniza is considered one of the best in the north, with the right combination of meat, pork fat, spices, vinegar, and any number of secret ingredients. Just as the secret behind the miki is the sprinkling of pork crackling, from no less than the town’s legendary sitsaron (or bagnet if you must call it that), made by boiling chunks of pork, air drying the tender portions, followed by extended frying over very low fire, a second air drying, then a few seconds over very high fire to make the pork pop and crackle. There are many other favorite pork products of the north, but that is another story.

Proven hit

Glory’s specialty has been a proven hit at Salcedo Market events, the PICC, on the invitation of Rep. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and at art show openings at Pinto Gallery in Antipolo, owned by neurologist Joven Cuanang, also a native of Batac.

While the empanada is a seasonal offering in the Metro, Batac longaniza, bagnet and sukang Iloko by the gallon are available every Saturday morning at Wen Manong in the Salcedo Market. The best option, of course, is still to drive the 470 or so kilometers to Batac, where Glory reigns.

Gameng Foundation (Irene M. Araneta is chair while Louise A. Marcos is corporate secretary), which manages Museo Ilocos Norte, recognizes outstanding practitioners of Ilocano arts and crafts, and seeks to perpetuate local practices through these awards.

The other awardees this year are veteran kalesa maker Raymundo Domingo Gaspar (83), and Consuelo Teodoro Castillo (94), who has sustained the traditional custom of memorializing the dead through unique mourning rituals of prayers, elegies and lamentations.

Past awardees include a master loom weaver, an expert in native musical instruments, a terra-cotta artist, and other practitioners in varied fields.

Gameng is the Ilocano word for treasure, denoting the important contribution of the awardees to Ilocos culture and heritage.

The Museo Ilocos Norte and Library serve as repositories of archival documents, books, artifacts, photographs, recordings and other aspects of Ilocos material culture.

Museo Ilocos Norte and Library is in General Luna St., Laoag City. Call 63 77-7704587.

Wen Manong can be bought at the Salcedo Weekend Market, Salcedo Village, Makati City.