Recently the town created a festival highlighting one of their culinary trademarks. A slab of cured meat known as “etag”. It also coincided with the Feast of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin. The festival went as usual like other town events go, of parades and games, and concerts and competitions and assorted cultural presentations , all of which revolved around the main theme “Nurturing our Common Origin amidst Converging Cultures.”

       The etag taking center stage was a curiousity to most who are unfamiliar with it. It is a slab of meat cured to perfect preservation stage and usually mixed with another Cordillera delicacy called the “pinikpikan”. Looking at it, the dark, wrinkled slab does not look like anything close to delicious. That is until you have tasted it.

       In the days of old, etag making was just one way to preserve the meat from spoiling too fast. Families usually butcher a hog or hogs during feast or celebrations, even during simple gatherings and much of the raw meat are left from the meals served. Refrigerators does not exist then, aside from electricity being unknown in these regions at that time. Salt was the only recourse. Etag is done two (or various) ways, the dry and the wet etag, as Sagada Vice Mayor Richard Yodong explained in addition to the demonstration done by Sagada elders Alfredo Batane, Ramon Ag-agwa and Nicholas Todyog.

       The wet etag is similarly slabs of raw pork, unwashed, salted and placed in large clay jars and covered to age. This process though does not preserve the meat so long. Being wet the ageing pork emits an aroma that usually attracts flies (even with the covers) and most (though not all) are penetrated somehow leaving it with maggots. That is another story.

       The dry etag is preferred over the wet ones. Same process until the salting stage after which the meat slabs are placed in the jay for just a day, just enough for the salt to soak and sink into the pork. After that it is taken out and skewered with vine strips on one end and placed over a wood burning stove to smoke it over a period of time. It has to be strung a bit above over the stove though, not over the fire. The heat searing the excess liquid and the smoke curing the slabs for taste and aroma. In Sagada the elder said they use the alnus tree leaves or the guava leaves to smoke the meat aromatically. The leaves are placed over the glowing embers to smother them, producing smoke more than fire. 3 days is the minimum curing, but the etag is considered “young” still. It could extend to weeks to months and the meat would keep for a long time, may even preserve for years. This process is yet again preferred over the sun-dried etag. Sun drying does not need the stove, they are instead hung outdoors for the sun to dry but the meat would not be that aromatic. With the meat cured and dried they are kept in dry wooden (or stone or clay jars) containers called “tangongo” and used slowly over time.

       The popularity of the humble “etag” has reached other places. In Baguio City, they are being sold in specialty stores too. And people of other cultures has learned to appreciate the role of the cuisine. As mentioned earlier, the etag is mixed in small proportions to the “pinikpikan” (native chicken with the wing and neck parts beaten with a stick to clot the blood, burned and simply boiled). And mind us all, the pinikpikan is without additives except the salt. Mixed with the sayote we call that tinola, not pinikpikan. The etag can also be mixed with sautéed or stewed vegetables and meat depending on one’s culinary taste or creativity. The lowly “etag” has found a niche in most Cordilleran kitchens and is slowly undergoing innovations. Some are flavored as does foreign hams. In all authenticity though, the plain and simple “etag” makes it stand.