Cassava Suman

It's our first time to attempt making súman from our cassava (and banana leaves) and it  turned out to be really good! We're always on the look-out for any recipe that would utilize our own homegrown produce. We've made cassava cake plenty of times, but we only thought of making suman just now. It's hard to keep the sizes consistently uniform though, as it's not as shape-able as sticky rice.

A New, Old Dish

It's been some weeks and we still haven't had our fill enjoying a dish; ginataáng santól (above), since our santól trees (Sandoricum koetjape) have been loaded with fruit. It's a dish more traditionally identified with Bícol than Batángas, and is one you'll hardly come across served in restaurants or even parties. This is true, rustic, home-cooked farm-to-table dish at its best.

It's actually very simple to make. First, you peel off the skin and then grate the pulpy flesh, which you will saute and eventually add gata (coconut cream) and chilis. That simple! And also, cook plenty of rice!

Lumpiang Ubod

We've had a steady supply of fresh úbod in the last weeks and is a good excuse for May to perfect our own home-made wrappers. It's a waste to make lumpiâ with the freshest, healthiest coconut piths and prepare it with store-bought, tasteless, parchment-like wrappers.

Ours is made from batter using native farm eggs, some flour, some milk, and a pinch of salt. She cooks it in a big, flat pan just like cooking crepes. It's quite daunting though, to take it out whole and roll the lumpia without tearing it.

 

Eggs on the Aparador

The free-range chickens are so free that one decided to lay eggs on a glazed bonsai pot, on an antique aparadór in the cabana! This is one of the "concerns" of having open huts; open to the "elements" include not just the sun and rain but even domestic animals like dogs and chickens, and small reptiles.

It would be great though if she lays her eggs in the kitchen already!

Suman

It's always sheer joy to see someone coming up the gate with a bagful of homemade súman! The locals always make some when there's a special occasion like a wedding or a big birthday party (which are fairly often), and of course, during the annual fiesta. My neighbors know that we love suman so they always send some my way!

This type (as there are as many kinds as locales) is THE suman of my barrio (or maybe Lipa-wide?): ground sticky rice (malagkít) mixed with coconut cream (gatâ) and refined sugar, then wrapped in banana leaves. Glorious!!!

A Fellow Blogger Visits

photo by Groovy Dulcet

It sweeps me off my feet that fellow blogger and loyal reader Groovy Dulcet came to the farm yesterday, all the way from New York, despite her short Philippine visit! She has been a friend from a long time ago, but we have not seen each other for more than twenty years. We found each other recently through Facebook and consequently discovered each other's blogs. Yet even though we live on opposite sides of our wide, wide world, we write and muse over pretty much the same things: gardening, slow food, home-made crafts... the whole caboodle!

photo by Groovy Dulcet

It's also only now I personally meet her adorable five-year old son Zach, who is gifted with a natural curiosity especially with tropical stuff that must look novel to a North American like him. From dried palápas to ripe balimbíng (right) which he gamely tasted (and liked!), he wandered around the farm and would excitedly point at another new discovery.

The highlight of the day was the lunch she brought: seafood pasta, a bottle of Shiraz and Fougasse bread (below) she herself baked! It smelled heavenly and is deliciously chewy and crusty at the same time. And because she especially baked it for her visit, she shaped her bread like a tropical leaf, touches me no end. Of course, time is always short whenever we are having a good time, though it gives us sufficient excuse to see each other again :)

photo by Groovy Dulcet

Cassava Cake

We're still harvesting plenty of kamóteng káhoy so it's time to make one of our perennial favorites: cassava cake! This time, May has perfected grinding the cassava so the cake's texture is flawlessly smooth, unlike the commercially available ones which is usually lumpy.

We also cook it in a turbo broiler instead of an oven, which we think makes the entire dish more evenly done. Some we come across have rather thick cakes, which result in sloshy middles.

Bamboo Shoots

A nutritious, filling, and highly-fibrous vegetarian staple is Labóng (young bamboo shoots), generously flourishing now in the farm at this time of the year. They are literally what they are called (and shown on the right): suckers growing out of the edges of the grove, harvested right when it juts out of the soil.

Bamboo is actually a kind of grass, a very stiff and tall variety but grass nevertheless. It spreads just like grass, through an underground network of rhizomes. 

You'd want to take off the outer part to get to the soft, edible core. You can slice them thinly or julienne; the smaller, the easier it is to eat, enjoy, and digest. In our house, we cook this with gata (coconut milk) and occasionally add small shrimps for flavor.

Remember that just like ubod which comes from the pith of the coconut tree, labong is the fibrous component of bamboo which eventually becomes the strong, sturdy bamboo that we use to construct and make furniture with. It's a great detoxifier especially for our digestive system, apparently containing phyto-chemicals and potent anti-oxidants. It kinda makes sense because in its compact form, all the necessary nutrition the mature bamboo will need is practically present already in its young form.

Breakfast

We have visiting family (from California) at this time and what best to serve them this beautiful Sunday morning but súman (native rice cakes) and tropical fruits! Here in Batangas, there is a wonderful selection of suman, made from either glutinous rice (malagkit) or ground cassava (giniling na kamoteng kahoy). The fruits in season too, are dazzlingly delicious! Mangoes and jackfruit reign supreme at this time of the year, while my nephew and niece are getting themselves acquainted with guayabano. My neighbor's rambutan tree already has fruit and gave us some. The red, hairy skin takes some getting used to, which initially spooked the visitors but got hooked once they tasted it!

Sunday Barbecue

Sunday is barbecue day! Dining alfresco in the gardens with the grill nearby is one of our simple joys living in the farm. We grill practically anything: meats, fish, veggies, bananas even! To enjoy this lifestyle though, you need a steady supply of charcoal. So... we make our own!

Admittedly, this is one that I really had no clue we could be able to do in our place. I don't need to share any longer where I first thought they came from, but it turns out the locals use plain firewood (the most common in our area being Mádre de Cacáo [Gliricidia sepium]) to be self-sufficient.


But it is no easy task. It is laborious, yes; but it is also imprecise and calls for much experience to flawlessly and efficiently turn your firewood to charcoal. 


So Mang Dimô, one of the better mag-uúlings in our bárrio, works in our place and makes it for us. He makes a pit in the ground for an on-the-spot, built-in earthen oven to put the chopped firewood and cover it with coconut palápas (fronds) topped with soil (or something like that, that's how I understand it). Then he lights a fire on one end and leaves it for some days until he sees a signal that it is already done.

Eventually, he'll block all the air by dumping dirt around the pit until the embers die and let the charcoal cool off. In the end, he shovels them out and sacks them for storage.


Home-made, chemical-free charcoal briquettes to grill our free-range chicken with veggies grown by us, for Sunday lunch in the garden, under the mango tree: priceless...

Kadyos

The kadyôs are ready for picking, Pigeon peas (Cajanus cajan)  rich in protein and amino acids. It has yet to be a more frequent staple in the country, quite unusual as it is very filling, tasty and delicious. It's traditionally more popular in the Visayas, closely identified with Ilónggo cooking. Kadyos is the "K' in the acronym "KBL," a dish that has achieved some popularity in Manila in the last couple of years ("B" is báboy [pork] and "L" is langkâ [jackfruit]). Our version below though, has no langka since ours are still too young to pick.

What I learned just now as I researched is it's the same peas that Indians use and make dal with, among their staples alongside lentils and beans. With their largely vegetarian diet, Pigeon peas are a valuable source of carbohydrates and protein.

Puto Lanson

No, it's not fried rice! It's called púto lansón; I couldn't photograph it any better, but I wish I could make you taste through this blog. It's another Ilónggo delicacy made by my caretaker, Bukíng and his wife, Cristina. They made it earlier; giniling na kamóteng káhoy (ground cassava) with gatâ (coconut cream), butter, and toasted coconut. It's also got toasted coconut in between, pretty much like a donut filling.


It's yummy! And I didn't know this before; I don't recall ever coming across this native steamed cake. I'm intrigued what else they can cook from our available produce in the farm?

Our Own Sinamak

My caretaker, Bukíng surprised me one weekend with vinegar that he made himself,collecting the coconut sap right from the tree and fermenting it for some time by then. It was remarkable that we are now making our own vinegar! It's not rocket science at all, but is quite laborious to make if only for small quantities. We realized it when he emphatically told the cook not to waste it for cooking but just for dipping; I guess if I have to climb a coconut tree everyday to make a bottle, I'll say the same thing!


And since that remark, the cook, May thought why not use it to make our own sinámak?   After all, we just have to add market-bought báwang at sibúyas (garlic and onion) to our own home-grown síling labúyo (chili pepper, below left), lúya (ginger, below right), and pamintáng buô (peppercorn).


Sinámak, as you can see is a wicked concoction of a dipping sauce for any dish you want to add some kick to. It works best for inasál na manók (grilled chicken) or iníhaw na pusît (grilled squid), fried lumpiâ, or any deep fried, crisp fish.

Chili Pepper/Siling Labuyo

Ginger/Luya

A variation is to add some tóyo (soy sauce) to add flavor to some real killer bagnět (deep-fried pork, below). Just don't forget the Lipitor!

Suman sa Ibus

My caretaker and his family made súman (above) today, a glutinous rice cake wrapped in young coconut fronds (íbŭs), on the occasion of All Saints' Day, when Filipinos troop to the cemeteries to pay respects to their loved ones who have gone ahead. The market-bought glutinous rice (malagkît) is mixed with kákang gatâ (the first press of coconut cream), then functionally yet artfully-wrapped and tied together before boiling it in water.


It was striking to see that even though my Ilónggô caretaker has no tomb to visit in Lipa, they still hold their traditions dear and keep them alive. And because he and his wife are quite amused that I patronize their traditional foods, they set aside some of the malagkit to make for me the rice version of báye báye (below), that toasty cake they made last July and August after the corn harvest.

Báye báye

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!

Guacamólê

I chanced on this good Mexican cookbook at National's Cut-Price Book Sale the other day called Antojitos: Festive and Flavorful Mexican Appetizers (for only P242!) and my cook, Marisú finally whipped up our own home-made guacamólê! Of course, it goes without saying that we made it from our own avocados; I wish I could say the náchos are from our own corn too!


The taste brings back many memories of trips to Mexico: backpacking in the Mayan south near Guatemála, a weekend in a charming B&B with my Mom in San Miguel de Allende, dining alfresco at the Zócalo in Mexico City, and many, many meals in Rosa's Cantina with my family in my sister's hometown of Temecula in Southern California.


I've got to plan a trip again soon!

Ubod

Sometimes, for whatever reason, we would have one or two felled coconut trees. When we were building, we had to clear some areas and there were a couple of trees, especially coconuts that were in the way.

Now I'm not sure if many people know where the úbod in fresh lumpiâ comes from. I somehow knew before that it's a coconut by-product and figured that, I guess it comes from the coconut itself (which, by the way, is not a nut but that's a totally different story altogether).

It turns out that úbod is Tagalog for pith, the young core of the trunk of the coconut tree (or the banana, whose ubod can be eaten too). On the right, we chopped off the top part of the felled tree (background) and skinned the bark to get the pith (lower part/foreground).

It's very nutritious to eat, fibrous (since this is what will become coco lumber in time), and filling. Imagine: from the roots underground, the tree absorbs water and nutrients, goes up the pith, and into the leaves, the flowers, and into the coconuts. Amazing.

Traditionally, we cook it as lumpiâ filling, sauteed and mixed with some kincháy (something like flat parsley) and small shrimps, to flavor. Anyone out there who has some new recipe to share?