Now, I don't mean to be a food blog but my staff managed to come up yet again with something from the excess corn produce and our usual residual coconuts from all the búco juice I drink. They call it Báye báye, according to them it's an Ilonggo delicacy that's traditionally served during Tódos los Santos. Well, here in Luzón, we proclaim that it is to be prepared after exhausting all possible recipes and its permutations weeks after the corn harvest!
How it's done is first, manually scrape the kernels from the cob (left), then toast the kernels on a pan (sangág). Afterwards, grind the corn (gíling, can be on a food processor but in our case, we used the coffee grinder) and it will look like what's on the bowl on the lower right.
Meantime, you should've prepared niyóg already (upper right) which you will mix with the sinangág na maís, add some muscovádo then pound them altogether (i-bayô) on a lusóng (I no longer know how to translate that, hahaha... it's like a big wooden pestle and mortar, someone remind me to blog about it soon).
The end product will look like the first photo, which is deliciously chewy and incredibly fragrant, I don't know how to explain it. It must be the roasted corn which smells new to me.
I googled about Baye baye and was surprised quite a lot has been written about it, despite it being relatively unknown and inaccesible to many. But most of what I found use malagkît (sticky rice) instead of corn, which shows in the photos; theirs look smooth and, well, sticky. But my staff insists it is also done just like how we did it. So there, my contribution to the worldwide web: Corn Baye baye.
By the way, for the sake of the photo, I garnished the dish with some pinípig which cannot be translated either. Thank God for hyperlinks and Wikianswers!
Hooray a food post! :) Looks good and wow, I would love to eat fresh green pinipig as in right now!
ReplyDeletehaha, i can visualize and relate to its taste. Yes it smells good too. If i am not mistaken there is a delicacy termed like that in Dumaguete, but it is like suman using malagkit. BTW, lusong and halo is exactly mortar and pestle, the big size. During the old days when gilingan are not yet available, most food crops are processed using the most useful 'lusong at halo'. Even palay becomes rice using it, coffee ground there, boiled cassava with coconut milk pound there is very delicious as 'nilupak' or 'mayukmok'in other dialects, pinipig done there too, and a lot more! You should see two persons doing the 'pinipig' and you will be amazed at the rhythm of the one holding the halo and the other mixing it.
ReplyDeleteIs it pronounced há-lô as in Halo-halo? That's the term for the pang-bayo? As I wrote in my profile, I'm humbled by how much I have yet to know about the immediate world around me. For one, I did not know until I was in my late 20s how the fields of green pálay become the rice in our plates.
ReplyDeleteGrace, I have a steady supply when it's in season :)