REVIEW: Mary’s Spicy Spicy WAKA WAKA Tropical Pepper Sauce
Mary’s Spicy Spicy WAKA WAKA Tropical Pepper Sauce is a very long name, so for now we will call it Waka Waka for short. I love that part of the name anyway, and it is something to remember. Fozzie the Bear used to say it all the time in the Muppet Show, and Pacman used to eat up the dots on the video screen to the waka waka munching sound. It was also the Official 2010 FIFA song and dance by Shakira which translated means “Do it”. Other online definitions I found were a Japanese poem and in New Zealand it is
1. a Māori canoe, usually made from a tree trunk
2. a tribal group claiming descent from the first Māori settlers in New Zealand
I can not find another meaning online, so I am not sure what it translates to in the Philippines, as it seems to be the inspiration for Mary’s sauce. No matter what, I love the memorable name, Waka Waka. What it comes down to is this, Chuck Evans wanted to dedicate a new line of products to his lovely lady friend Mary. It is still part of the infamous Montezuma Brand, and the new inspired lineup also has Mary’s Flaming Dragon Asian Flavor Super Sauce which we reviewed last time to really positive reviews. With all that said, does Waka Waka live up to the playfulness of the name and be as good as it’s Sister Asian sauce? Firehead Thomas and I unveil the mystery for you now in our video review.
Firehead Thomas
Buddah
Contact:
Chuck Evans’ MONTEZUMA® Brand
1892 Rear Oakland Park Avenue
Columbus, Ohio 43224-3628
www.montezumabrand.com
SM************@MO************.com
Phone: 614-268-7330 Mailbox #1
Fax: 614-268-7977
The name Waka Waka was derived from a combination of sources. Much like all of the cuisines of world, the trade and barter systems from early European exploration of the world make all cuisines a huge melting pot of ingredients and flavors.
The tropical fruit source of the sauce derived from pineapple, mango, guava, calamansi lime, chiles, tomatoes, ingredients found on both the American and Asian continents. Traveling several times to the Philippines in the past 2 years for several months, I also saw in the many city and village markets the variety of East meets West fruits and vegetables that were native to their respective continents and which originally traversed via the trade routes.
The Philippines was influenced by 350 years of Spanish rule where the islands were governed by Mexico. Until Mexico claimed independence from Spain in 1816, 1/5th the value of all goods were paid to the Spanish crown. Through the Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade from 1565-1815, the Philippines (named after King Philip II of Spain) became the major shipping port for Chinese (the merchant class in Manila) and Spanish/Mexican merchants.
After crossing the Pacific ocean, the finest Chinese goods traveled overland from Acapulco to Mexico City and on to the port of Veracruz, stopping in Havana and then on to Spain. This journey could take up to a year and a half. Since the Philippines was an important Spanish colony, the desire to open a trans-Pacific trade route to New Spain (Mexico, Central & South America) resulted in trade with southeast Asia and China. China was interested primarily in silver, which they sought, where huge deposits and silver mines were found in Mexico, Bolivia, and Peru, and in turn traded silks, spices, and porcelain, as well as the vast variety of foodstuffs that came and went with each voyage across the Pacific.
Filipinos like to use cute and whimsical rhyming names in naming people (for example, a famous Mactan native chief named “Lapu Lapu”; the current Philippine President is nicknamed “Ninoy”, children have rhyming nicknames such as “Chin chin” or “Bim bim”, places (for example: provinces named “Pampanga, Palawan, and Zamboanga” and cities (for example, “Iloilo City” or a town named “Baybay”).
Waka Waka became the result of starting with a play on the word Oaxaca {“wah-hah-ka”} which is always mispronounced by Americans due to its spelling and the English failure to understand the Spanish/Indian dialect pronunciation. I eliminated the middle “hah” part and shortened it to “waka”.
About the same time, and much to my delight, Shakira came out with her FIFA World Cup soccer hit “This Time for Africa, the Waka Waka song” which was influenced by a Cameroon (Africa) military “Waka waka” marching song. So with the WAKA “Oaxaca” origin from Mexico I added the rhyming and duplicating use of the word component from the Philippines and came up with WAKA WAKA.
This very flavorful spicy, spicy sauce is made from a variety of tropical fruits and chiles, including the calamansi lime which is a small lime grown only in the Philippines and reminds me of the naranja agria (sour orange) in the Yucatan, except that the calamansi fruit is a lime and about the size of a large marble with a sweeter, orangey-lime flavor.
East meets West in Mary’s WAKA WAKA Tropical Pepper Sauce. The origin of this sauce stems from the common practice in Philippine restaurants providing, upon request if not on the table, a small sauce dish of several calamansi limes and labuyo chiles (similar in heat and flavor, but shorter, to de arbol chiles) where the patron mashes the chiles with your large eating spoon in the sauce dish with white vinegar and the juice of the calamansi lime(you can also add soy sauce which nicely complements the briny pepper sauce).
A ubiquitous custom in the Philippines is the use of both hands to eat with a large-spoon in one hand as a spoon, scraper, shoveler, and where the spoon-edge is also used as a knife to cut and pull part foodstuffs, and in the other hand, is the fork [no chopsticks in this southeast Asian country].
White vinegar and soy sauce are always found sitting as condiments at every table. The vinegar, calamansi lime, chile mash is similar to making your own hot sauce at the table to spritz on whatever dish you order.
In Mary’s WAKA WAKA Tropical Fruit Pepper Sauce, I decided to take the basic hand-concocted chile, vinegar, & lime mixture a little further by adding tomato & chiles from the New World with tropical fruits from Asia. Thus, a different and tasty tropical fruit-based pepper sauce with nice heat balanced throughout this all-purpose condiment.
I love both of these sauces and I need some more….is the website up and running yet?
Chuck, you indeed walking Encyclopedia. Thanks for the history lesson. I was hoping you were going to say it was Fozzie because his puppetry was fashioned in a Filipino village, but this was nice too. :_retarded:
Yes Sir.