Because of unconditional love, a woman is willing to suffer the hardships of daily life for the happiness of her loved ones—just as the love of Pura Villanueva Kalaw, that at some point in Philippine history, epitomized the royal role of the mother in a home, for good sustenance and warm keep.

This Filipina from Iloilo was born to be loyal and loving to her husband Teodoro M. Kalaw and through this love she came up with something essential for the Filipinas as guidelines for home and kitchen economics, the book "Condimentos Indigenas," or Native Recipes.

Condimentos Indigenas—the first cookbook of Filipino recipes—was made because of Pura’s eagerness to buy a billiard table for his husband, whose leg was amputated because of infection. Purita wanted to give back the self-confidence of his husband (Teodoro.) Playing billiards was suggested by the doctors as the best form of exercise, and treatment for him because he was showing tendencies towards high blood pressure.

Before the book was even published, Purita ordered an artificial leg from the U.S. so he could play better, but she didn’t have any money to buy the table.

But because she was determined to buy one, she collaborated with the government to come up with a cookbook of Filipino dishes. The cookbook became so popular that it was first published in Spanish letters and later translated into different Filipino dialects like Tagalog, Bicolano, Ilocano, Visayan, Pampango, and Cebuano—and was actually reprinted five times.

The book contains recipes from known cooks of different provinces interviewed by Purita. This book features Agueda Dia de Guariña of Sorsogon, Victorial Peralta of Ilocos, Teresa Veloso de Vamenta and Petrade Taylon of Cebu, Maria Villanueva de Salas and Rosalia Vasques of Iloilo, Miss Aguilar of Pasig, Miss Schuck of Mindanao, and three from Batangas as Arsenia K. Silva, Rosario Kalaw Katigbak, and Emilia Manguial de Kalaw.

The book aimed to promote nationalism in the choice of food and to teach housewives how to prepare nutritious yet simple and economical dishes.

During that time (pre-war,) imported ingredients were so popular among Pinoys but most families couldn’t afford such prime ingredients. This triggered Purita to come up with regional, quality, and gourmet recipes for underprivileged families to enjoy.

The book was so wonderful—and even at this point still challenges our best of chefs—that it contained 54 recipes on Filipino vegetable cooking, 23 for chicken and other fowls, 15 for meat, 29 for fish and other seafood, and 33 affordable desserts and pastries, and in some preparations included cooking modes for leftovers to still be used.

Purita also included a Decalogue for cooks, a 10-commandments for a perfect cook and housewife, which could be passé at this time of modern culinary pedagogy, but might still be educational most especially for beginners in cooking and young housewives. More so, in reviewing these commandments, one is bound to learn the great histographical difference between the Filipinas of today and of the rich traditional past.

Here are Kalaw’s kitchen credos:

1. Love the kitchen above all other places in your home because it is the base of your family’s health, and the source of many economics. If you have no artesian well water available, boil your drinking water daily to purify it. Have your kitchen well ventilated, well lighted and clean. Clean your utensils, especially your knives and other metal objects, because rust gives a bad taste to food and dirt is the focus of germs and diseases.

2. Serve food containing the necessary elements for nutrition of the human body. Do not throw away broth because it contains nutritious substances. Do not lack for fruits and desserts even if this be but a banana or the humble panocha, because fruits help regulate the functions of the stomach and sugar preparations contain calories.

3. Bless all foods as manna from heaven. Regulate the hours for serving meals, and let these hours be the most pleasant for peace and happiness. Present your dishes attractively, do not waste even a particle of nourishment, because from small quantities are formed the larger sums. Remember that in peeling camote or potatoes, cooking them first in water saves waste; that radish and camote leaves as well as that of other tubers contain nourishing substances, and that both should be made use of; that in chickens and other birds, the blood, entrails, head and feet give rich broth and good soup, as well as the bones of any meat. Do not waste used lard; even if it does not look good, still it will give good flavor to vegetables.

4. Honor native recipes above all other recipes because, by their simplicity, they are the most appropriate for our tropical climate; and because their ingredients are products of our native soil, fresh and free from harmful preservatives.

5. Do not cook vegetables without first simmering them for some time in water and a little salt so as to remove insects, and so that they may retain freshness and verdure, and thus have better flavor.

6. Do not cut meat except across its fiber. Before cooking, remove all the tendons, then give it a few sharp blows, because this is the secret of softening meat. If you want good broth, keep your meat simmering over charcoal after boiling it well.

7. Do not put in the leaves of vegetables while the broth is still boiling, as the vegetables will become tough. If it is cabbage, labong, radish or onions, that is being cooked, leave the pot uncovered so that its disagreeable odor will evaporate and its natural color is retained. The same method is done for frying. Allow the lard to be heated first so that your cooking will not smell a smoke.

8. Do not cook fish unless its belly and its head are so clean that nothing pink is seen in them. Native dishes, precisely because they are simple, do not hide filth. Nevertheless, if fish is to be broiled over charcoal, it is preferable that its scale be not removed.

9. Do not cook chicken until after you have removed the tendons of its legs, including slimy and slippery substances, and after beating the meat. When cleaning the intestines, take care that the bile is not spilled. To remove the fine feathers from the bird, singe the bird over a live flame.

10. Do not waste the pieces of chicken of fish or meat that are leftovers from a meal because, even if they are in small quantities, by adding to them some vegetables, they can become another dish.

"Lastly, observation, accurate proportion, practice and above all, goodwill are the best guides for the seasoning of a healthful and rich meal."