“INVENTORY going on.”

That sign prevented my family from getting a proper New Year lunch in Baguio years ago. That’s what delayed necessary pain killers from being administered, at least that’s what the nurses told us at the hospital. Can there be an inventory while operations go on?

Those two examples are not exactly what L ’Inventaire du Patrimoine Culinaire de la France is about. It’s about taking inventory of French traditional products.

The project written by Randall Rothenberg was originally published in the magazine “Conde Naste Traveler” in 1996, reprinted in the book “Provence: The Collected Traveler” edited by Barrie Kerper. Rothenberg described L ’Inventaire as an encyclopedic endeavor to “catalog every extant traditional food product in each of the nation’s twenty-six internal and external regions.”

The surprising aspect of this very French project is that two people who undertook the job were not even French. The American husband-and-wife team, Philip and Mary Hyman, were commissioned to go through the country to track down the products helped by French researchers, ethnologists and an agronomist. The Hymans who were living in France produced several translations of works by French acclaimed chefs like Paul Bocuse and articles on antique recipes. For the Conseil National de Arts Culinaires (CNAC), the government agency which oversaw the project, the couple’s authoritative knowledge of French cuisine was more important.

The result of the project is several volumes of food that are still “living” or still being produced in the “internal regions” such as Alsace, Limousin and the “external regions” such as Guadaloupe.

The Hymans found that with traditional products, sometimes changes have taken place through the years, even centuries. A sugar-coated confection like dragees de Verdun, given during baptisms, used to be made of aniseed but is now made of almonds. Foie gras from Perigord used to be made only from goose liver but now also includes duck liver. There were instances when what they know can no longer be found such as miel de Narbone, rosemary honey from Narbone in southern France. The sad part is what they found in shops were from somewhere else such as Spain.

I suppose the objective is not only to document products but also to encourage production as a way to preserve their culinary culture.

246 cheese varieties

Author Rothenberg’s lighthearted observation is that L ’Inventaire may also reveal if the comment of Charles de Gaulle on just how many cheeses are produced in France is accurate. The former French president is reported to have said: “How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?”

It would be interesting to know if the same project can be done in our country. Just imagine how many kinds of kakanin (rice cakes) there are in one town, in one province.

When I learned and wrote about the salt block called tultul in Guimaras, many e-mails were sent telling me about the salt blocks in other regions of the country.

Yet as interesting as “living” food should be foods that have vanished or are about to. Doreen Gamboa Fernandez’s mother, Alicia Lucero Gamboa, once told me about a Nueva Ecija specialty, Bao Maria, which she said has disappeared. My grandmother cooked a chicken dish with peanut sauce (not kare-kare or pipian) that I haven’t tasted for ages. My mother-in-law told me about hopia served during Leyte fiestas that had no resemblance at all to the Chinese hopia as we know it.

Why not do your own inventory and write me about it?

E-mail pinoyfood04@yahoo.com