Q&A with Paolo Lorenzana (Mafalda Makes)

On early food memories, his fascination with CMBYN's mayordoma, and his love of pasta

I’ve been a fan of Paolo Lorenzana’s for a long time. He gave me my first writing job in 2008 when he helmed Status Magazine, and would go on to head a number of other publications over the years (and give me many other jobs), including his brainchild, the groundbreaking TEAM Magazine, the Philippines’ first queer magazine. He also wrote and interned for GQ and NYMag while studying at Columbia for his Master’s.

These days, when he’s not writing copy for local brands, or doing deep-dives on mangoes and other food topics for CNN Philippines, he’s focused on creating content for Mafalda Makes, an Instagram page that’s quickly gaining a following, where he shares his cheeky take on food with recipes like this lovechild of a bibingka and Dutch baby, this mortadella-filled chive agnolotti, or this Joy Luck Club-inspired Maling sandwich.

I caught up with him recently to chat about how the page came to be, how his interest in food developed after years of hating food, his favorite pasta shape, and why he’s so fascinated with CMBYN’s mayordoma.

What’s your earliest food memory?

I remember being so jealous of the American kids at school, cos I went to IS for grade school, so I was around a lot of American kids. I guess a lot of Asians who grew up in America would be able to relate to this, like lunch box time. You know everybody’s sitting together, and you’re the weird Asian kid with the really smelly baon. They have these neatly packed sandwiches. They had those Kraft crackers with the spread. 

Oh yeah, Lunchables. I remember those. I was obsessed with those.

That memory struck me. I haven’t thought about that in so long. 

That’s crazy. That’s actually one of my earliest food memories as well. 

I think I must’ve been like 7 or 8.

So what was your baon?

Nothing that I wanted to show to people because I was embarrassed. My mom gave me this really bulky, rice cooker-looking thing, it wasn’t even a lunchbox, it looked like a device. It was like this layered thing, with a pink floral design, which you know now I appreciate. But back then, that was really awkward. And it was so smelly and there was a lot of condensation from the rice. I hated it so much. I just wanted a regular lunchbox with American snacks, with a fucking neatly packed sandwich with those printed designed tissue paper wrapped around, I just wanted that.

Obviously, I’ve since unpacked a lot of the issues I had back then.

So were these like the first seeds of resentment being planted for your mom? 

Or like, self-hate. But yes, she was a very absent mom. It was more our kusinera who was responsible for what I ate. Which is a whole different issue. It’s just more about the culture and how embarrassed I was.

Well yeah, you’re in the Philippines, at this international school, and you’re surrounded by white people.

Yeah.

So it’s like you were othered in your own country. 

Yes.

Which is very complicated. 

Yes, plus the whole homosexual thing, so a lot of these issues coincided for me. 

Since then, I’ve had this whole eye-opening experience with Filipino food. I can appreciate the snack packs, the Lunchables, and I can appreciate Filipino food. You know I’m in a really good place in my life right now where there’s very little judgment when it comes to food because it relies so much on context. 

I feel the same actually. It only took 30 plus years to get there. 

Which is a good thing. At least we got there.

Being able to think back on that stuff without any resentment, or with a more forgiving eye. 

It’s good, it’s quite early for us. A lot of people go through life giving up a lot of the things that they grew up with. We’re pretty lucky I think.

It’s becoming more common as well. A lot more people are talking about these issues that we used to just bury.

Yeah, it’s in every New York Times essay written by an Asian American. But we welcome it all.

How did your interest in food develop?

You know I hated eating up to a certain age, I was very picky with food. The smallest thing would turn my appetite, like if I was sitting across from my older brother, and I saw like a mole on his neck, it would turn me off. 

I was the skinniest kid because of that. I didn’t like to eat so I would hide a lot of food in those little rice bowls when no one was looking. My dad was very dictatorial at our table and he put a lot of pressure on us to finish our food, he related it to the way Chinese people eat food, which is very value-driven, so if you didn’t finish your food, you weren’t operating like a Chinese person, which is frugal; you weren’t all these values. So I’d have to hide food in these rice bowls and sometimes, I’d have to kick a piece of chicken underneath the dinner table when no one was looking, and of course I got into trouble because of that. 

I don’t know how things changed for me. I don’t even remember when I started liking food. I do remember one of the first types of food I really loved was mozzarella cheese, that kind of processed supermarket mozzarella cheese. The first time I had mozzarella my mind was blown. From then on, I was interested in all international foods. It started with pasta and lasagna. I think for a lot of kids it starts with Italian food.

And now you’re making your own pasta.

And now I’m making my own pasta. I guess when you hear something like mozzarella, to a kid, it’s fancy-sounding, you want to know more.

I guess it’s also the most entry-level cheese ‘cause it’s not super strong. 

And the texture. You can fist one whole little ball into your mouth. It’s a good thing to introduce to kids.

How has your life changed since the pandemic and how has it affected your food habits?

I think like a lot of people who are stuck at home, you have so much time to learn about food preparation. So the things I’d kind of been delaying, like the things I’ve wanted to learn, like pasta for example. There’s this one episode of Master of None where Dev has to go to Italy to learn to make pasta. That kind of planted a seed in my head that making pasta was so difficult that you had to go to Italy to learn to make it, which is totally not the case. That’s a misconception about pasta; it’s one of the easiest things you can do, it’s just intimidating. 

Once you have a master dough, and there’s a lot on the internet, you can pretty much do anything with it.

What’s your favorite pasta to make?

You know I realized that you don’t even need egg to make good pasta. If you have the proportion right, you can make a really forgiving, good dough and then throw anything into it to flavor it. So right now I’m kind of obsessed with herby doughs. Like a basil dough, which you can toss with anything, any sauce.

I like certain shapes, like this one called busiate, which is basically Shirley Temple’s curls. It’s fun to eat, it catches sauce well. I’m sure there are a million different shapes that I haven’t tried yet that I can’t wait to explore. 

How did you come up with the idea for Mafalda Makes?

It was one of those half-assed ideas that came to fruition, I have a lot of half-assed ideas, but this one actually stuck around. 

I think it was in Paris and I went into this bakery run by Japanese people called Carre Pan de Mie, and they had the best sandwich bread that I’d ever eaten. And they still do, from then on I became obsessed with any bread that Japanese people make. 

I became obsessed with milk bread. I wanted to recreate it at home, and so I tried to start this small business from my BGC apartment, which is the worst idea because of the high electricity costs. And so after trying to sell bread from my apartment for a month, I was like, I’m not going to make anything out of this. So what was supposed to be a small business inspired by the mayordoma in CMBYN, Mafalda, that primarily sold milk bread, it flatlined. Because I was like, I can’t sell shit. And then, two years later, I said, you know what I still love making different things, especially in this pandemic, I’ve been trying so many different things beyond bread, so maybe I’ll just start making content because it makes me happy. It makes me happy to share this shit. I love the little glory of posting something and it being appreciated. And that’s pretty much how Mafalda became Mafalda Makes.

You know, I looked up the actor who played Mafalda, her name’s Vanda Capriolo, and she has an Instagram account that’s full of photos of Armie Hammer. 

Are you serious? Oh my God.

I wonder what she thinks about him being a cannibal [among other things].

That’s a true mayordoma. She’ll stick by you. 

But more about that, why Mafalda meant so much to me. The character in CMBYN, out of all of them. Of course, you love the romance and I loved Annella, she appeals to a whole different part of me, but Mafalda, my God. If you grew up in Manila with housekeepers, you recognize that love. You had a Mafalda. 

Yes, of course.

My Mafalda was Sol, and I still talk to her on Facebook these days. She introduced me to a lot of food growing up that I didn’t appreciate back then. That I’m totally nostalgic for.

Like what?

She had a really good spaghetti and chicken curry, which she put egg in. 

So maybe this is how your interest in food developed? Because of her?

Yeah, and she still says that I was such a bitch when I was a kid. Because I was super picky about food. And because of that mozzarella phase, I would ask her why she didn’t cook more Italian food. She runs a Hainanese chicken food business now.

Where is she?

She moved to Singapore after working for us, then she moved back here [to the Philippines] recently, and she’s running the business here. 

How do you come up with the recipes you want to feature?

A lot of it is, I’ll see something on Instagram, and then I’ll research, research, research. And then I’ll adapt it to how I want to do it. So I’ll pick something up from like Evan Funke, this chef in LA who put out a book on pasta that promotes rolling pasta by hand. And he has this catchphrase, ‘Fuck your pasta machine.’ Which I’m like is a little too drastic, the pasta machine works for a lot of things and it’s actually quite efficient. 

I got a lot of the master dough recipes from him and adapted them to what I wanted to do for a certain week. He has a lot of good egg-dough and flour-and-water-dough recipes.

Who are your favorite food people?

You know there’s this amazing food historian who doesn’t get enough respect. Her name is Felice Prudente Sta. Maria. She’s a veteran food writer in the Philippines. And every day, she has a post, or five, about Philippine history in relation to food; everything from what Franciscan priests thought about our mangoes in the 17th century to Magellan’s food habits. It’s so interesting and tells us a lot about our culture. 

She’s written so much about Filipino food that unfortunately doesn’t get enough attention because there are so few publishing houses in the Philippines and they don’t pay attention to good book design. Even until now. 

My sister, of course, [Margarita Manzke], she put up Republique in LA.

Nora Daza. Everybody had that cookbook in their kitchen right? And it would endure all your oil stains. We got a lot of our recipes from her. That’s what we grew up eating. 

Evan Funke, of course. And Alice Waters.

Most controversial food take?

You know I’m all about the delata (canned food). I’m sure a lot of people think I’m disgusting. Like Maling. 

No that’s not disgusting at all.

Like, SPAM regular.

You’re not Filipino if you don’t love canned food. 

Spam tocino, have you tried it?

I think I have. When I still ate meat, I remember going through all the flavors of SPAM. I loved it. 

You’re a morning person, right?

A severely morning person.

What time do you wake up?

There are times when I wake up at 4:30 in the morning. There are times when the latest I’ll wake up is 6:30 am. 

What time do you go to bed?

The times when I’m waking up a bit later, I’ll go to bed at midnight but I try to get shut-eye by 9:30 pm. The reason being, I’ve just always felt, waking up when it’s still a little dark and no one’s outside, is the best thing ever. Not seeing anyone outside. Kind of like a doomsday scenario where everyone’s disappeared, and the world is yours for the taking. 

It’s like you got there first.

It’s terrible. [laughs]

Do you have breakfast?

Yeah. The first thing I do is walk Cary, and then he gets breakfast first. And then I get breakfast.

What’s your ideal breakfast?

I can’t do without eggs, so any variation.

Do you have favorite preparation?

I try to use up whatever needs to be used up in my fridge so omelets. What I love is, I don’t know where I saw this, I think on Munchies, but they had like this egg-drop soup, that has also been my go-to. And it’s super simple, and I love when you do it just right, and the egg whites are a little thicker and give you more bite. I love that. I also love using yolks, I love curing them in soy sauce and mirin, then it’s done in a day, and you put that on rice and it’s one of the best things ever. So eggs, forever and ever.

And cereal! This brings us full circle with how I was jealous of those American kids. Sleeping over at their houses and seeing their collection of boxed cereal. Since then, I’ve never been deprived.

How many boxes do you have?

I’m not wasteful, I just buy one box at a time. Last time I had the Hershey’s Kisses cereal, which was pretty good. Right now I’m finishing off a box of cereal called Happy Shapes. It’s got marshmallows.

Are you still writing?

I’m writing again cos I’m trying to work on my portfolio so I can apply for an Artist visa and join my boyfriend in the States. Then I was like, you know, I actually miss this. I miss this so much. And it’s all been about food; that’s all I have the bandwidth for now. So that’s been fun.

I read your article about mangoes. Do you plan on going back into publishing?

Probably not. My setup right now is pretty great. I have a day job that I can do with my eyes closed. I do social media for various brands. That makes me enough money and gives me enough time to pursue other things. And it’s not like I’m super well-off or anything but I have time. That’s the important thing. And right now, at least for now, I can do shit that I like, I don’t know how far that’ll take me and I have this, in the back of my head, I’m like ‘you’re not making enough so that, in the future, when you get diagnosed with cancer, you can pay for treatment.’ You know what I mean? Does that bother you?

Oh, completely. I think about that a lot.

Right? You need cancer money. It’s something I do think about. Making enough to support your old person self. The setup right now is ok, but I don’t think it will be forever. Something’s got to give. But I’m seeing how far I can take the current setup. 

(This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.)

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