Noodles, kapusta, cow skin: Lowell Folk Festival returns with ‘Food from Around the World’ - Lowell Sun
Walking through the busy John Glenn Middle School gymnasium in Bedford Wednesday afternoon, it looked less like a gym and more like a large kitchen, with the smell of onions permeating through the air as volunteers for Iskwelahang Pilipino chopped away.
Elsa Janairo was among those leading the show, as she and the many volunteers prepared massive batches of some of the most popular dishes at the Lowell Folk Festival every year, with the 2024 festival rapidly approaching.
IP is a Filipino cultural school, focusing less on language and more on general Filipino culture like music, cooking, dance and their cultural traditions. The group has been a part of the Folk Festival since the beginning in 1987. The Philippines is an extremely diverse country, consisting of thousands of different islands with cultural differences across different regions. While IP is not trying to represent food from every single region, Janairo said they want to offer New Englanders a window into what some Filipino food is like from their festival booth at Boarding House Park.
Every year, IP offers pancit guisado, a kind of thin, sautéed noodle with a seasoning that differs from traditional East Asian soy sauces, Janairo said. Their chicken and pork barbecue dishes are grilled fresh on site during the festival.
“I think we may have one of the largest footprints at the festival because we have so much cooking on site,” said Janairo. “Today is all about preparing marinades and chopping a few things for Friday’s festival date.”
While IP is not debuting any completely new dishes, Janairo said this year the noodles are finally gluten free, after years of trying to come up with a recipe that really worked.
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