Lasang Pinoy 3: The Round-Up

Filipino street food was celebrated in Lasang Pinoy!

Lasang Pinoy 3 was an Extra Challenge for most Pinoy bloggers, who grew up with dire warnings on how unsanitary streetfood is. For some, it was even a case of transcending their fear factor. But I am so happy that everyone gamely went out of their "sheltered cocoons" to participate in this event. Kudos to all of us for that!

Most of the write-ups hark back to our childhoods, and we all discovered that, despite the "dirty" associations of the word, we actually grew up on streetfood. Because streetfood does not end on isaw or fishball, but comprises a wide array of regional delicacies that are intrinsically part of the Filipino food culture scene.

Here are a total of thirty-six entries from thirty-one blogs spanning three continents. At least four are first-timers to Lasang Pinoy, and two participated with the first posts of their blogs.

Lasang Pinoy 3. As varied as the streetside food offerings in any town and city of the Philippines.

METRO MANILA: STREETSIDE FOOD IN THE HEART OF THE CITY

Iceman, from Quezon City, remembers trading Magnolia Chocolait bottles, Royal Tru Orange and Tanduay longnecks for cheese curls in newspaper cones from the bote-dyaryo man of his childhood in Caloocan City. Check it out at Ice Carvings.

Mira likes the turon in UP, and remembers her professor's tale of "golden turon." At Mirsbin's Kitchen, she created her own gold, apple turon.

Sassy (Connie) has a very informative LP3 entry about the processes of making balut, puto bumbong and the other common streetfoods in Metro Manila, taho and fishballs, in her food blog Pinoy Cook.

LadyCharlie loves taho anytime of the day. So What’s Cooking in her blog? Taa-hoo-o! Including a recipe for making the healthy streetside snack.

Over at Worthless Anik-Anik, Lani in Quezon City craves for taho, and has passed on the addiction to the members of the second generation in the family.

MarketMan compiled a delectable spread of streetside fruits for this event, you’ll have a grand time reading about the history of how some of our common fruits landed on these shores, and how to best shop for good prutas.

Ajay takes us on a trip to Quiapo, that veritable streetfood haven in the heart of Manila that is full of soulful/soul-less contradictions, you can practically see the Writings On The Wall.

If Pinoy streetfood multiply by the minute in kind and quantity, there is such a thing as a reluctant streetfood, according to my friend Edwin who wrote about the native Leyte delicacy moron proliferating in MRT stations.

Nick of Watson.Online/ craves the snow cream of his childhood days in Baguio City, but gives us a full picture, in two LP3 posts, of the streetfood scene in Makati City, where he is now based, including the night howlers and jollijeeps.

A full-time law student at UP, Rinna took advantage of the semestral break to join us, recreating the streetfood scene during the Feast of Sto. Nino in tough Tondo.

Want an isaw on your shirt? Perhaps a buco? Or fishballs to wear? Then head on over to Today, Tomorrow, and The Little Bits In-Between, and ogle Cynthia’s Pinoy streetfood creations. Maybe she’ll get you to order. Wear what you eat!

Tatang Retong in San Francisco, California recalls how tasty the forbidden "buying outside"fishballs and sago at gulaman were during his gradeschool days in Quezon City. This is his first time to join Lasang Pinoy, and he blogs at Tatang's Karinderia.

REGIONAL DELICACIES: PINOY STREETFOOD FROM ACROSS THE PHILIPPINES


Streetfood like tamales and camotecue are the local offerings in Sta. Rita, Pampanga, the hometown of Karen at Pilgrim’s Pots and Pans. Read her post and you’ll get a peek at the historical origins of some of our common streetfood, and an understanding of why they are so popular.

Phisch sees the marvels of God's creations in the eyes of a pineapple, bought from the numerous fruit stands in Tagaytay. Learn how to groove a beautiful pattern in In That Number.

Manny, writing from Canada, says that “we are all impulsive four-year-olds when it comes to food. We want it when we want it. Satisfying this urgent need is streetfood’s primal appeal.” Find out how he came up with this conclusion, at the same time having a look at the streetfood scene in Bataan, plus an easy tikoy recipe, at Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.

JMom, cooking in In Our Kitchen in North Carolina, laments that her kids, who grew up in a germ-phobic and sue-crazy American society, could not experience Pinoy streetfood the way she did growing up in Baguio City, particularly the ultimate street snack arroz caldo, with or without chicken, that was always a hot comfort to the stomach in the cold mountain city.

I’m so happy we have another addition to the growing Pinoy food bloggers brood. Sky, a Fire Water Husband (I’ll leave that to you to find out), is a quasi-Ilocano, and is so in love with the Ilocos empanada that he could marry one! There’s a recipe, but he declares, “You can take Ilocos out of the empanada, but you can’t take an empanada out of Ilocos.”

Homesickness during a short teaching stint in Lucena led Minette to discover pancit habhab, which became a favorite part of her Lafang List. Accordingly, eating this Quezon streetfood is a total experience that cannot be had in other parts of the country.

Kayli brings to us Laguna with its coconuts, and of course, the ultimate Laguna pasalubong from the road, bukopie! Being a Pinay in Singapore (A Foodie Paradise), she misses the fishball sauces in Rizal, as they are one of a kind, thus difficult to recreate.

Calvin, a well-traveled and well-“eaten” hotelier, takes us to Liloan, the lighthouse town in Cebu where on the streets you could find a cornucopia of edible Visayan delights.

Another friend who walks in the footsteps of Doreen Fernandez tells us about the streetfood she was allowed to partake of, as well as tried to take a sneak taste of, while growing up in Daet.

I wrote about my favorite Pangasinan streetfood, intemtem, or Ilocano tupig to the rest of the country.

VERY PINOY: FILIPINO STREETFOOD CCOOKED IN FOREIGN SHORES

Stef over at Stefoodie in Pennsylvania has kept abreast of the ever-expanding streetfood trends in her mother country. Besides recalling her favorite Pinoy streetfood that are rarely available in the US, she teaches us how to cook tsitsarong balat ng manok, cholesterol-laden but scrumptious and yummy, and “an undeniable part of our cultural identity.”

Dexie of Ilocana Chef, writing from North Carolina, remembers eating barbeque on sticks, as differentiated from the barbeque kebabs, to the tune of the romantic Pangasinan folk song Malinak Lay Labi, in her post BBQ in Stick.

Celia Kusinera hopes to have perfected the recipe for a sizzling, truly Pinoy pork barbecue, but she thinks grilling in the UK does not seem conducive for producing the same taste of barbecue grilled in dusty, chockfull-of-jeepney-fumes Manila. Nevertheless, she uses at English Patis an all-time favorite Pinoy recipe that’s made the barbecue our very own.

Thess in The Netherlands preferred isaw, both pork and chicken, over her grandma's vegetables, eating them with rice for lunch back in the Philippines. More recently, she has also discovered the tasty tukneneng, eating both and saying Eet Smakelijk!

Lumpia are what Queenkv of Brainpickings munched on, on the way to skating practices and classes in college in Los Angeles. She says it’s also the best Pinoy food to introduce to non-Filipinos. Chicken barbecue, on the other hand, are the best Pinoy party meal on stick to carry around while working the party crowd.

Ting of World Class Cuiscene tells us she had 20 pieces of fishballs for lunch in Baguio City, from a place managed by a doctor, so she was sure of the place’s hygiene. Nowadays, fishballs cooked at home in the US, and particularly when the family comes to the country for a visit, makes for a fun afternoon with the kids.

Ces, the do-it-yourself mom in New York, has come up with her first blog entry for this event, recalling her and her daughter’s passion for binatog. Head on over to The DIY Chef and congratulate her!

Atinna was lucky her Mom was resigned to the fact that her daughter wanted to eat junk food and streetfood, especially ampao and maruya. She's very happy that in Japan, where her blog Atinna in TokyoKuni is based, ampao at least can be found in most stores.

Baby Rambutan’s Stel, now based in Boston, reminisces about sneaking sips of forbidden banana extract flavored sago at gulaman, and how the hubby persisted on eating seaport delicacies in the Visayas despite being previously downed by them. Peanuts, too, the healthier ones – boiled – from the loving lola from her childhood .

Now those who haven't eaten ice candies in their childhood raise your hands! No hand? Santos always includes in her Filipino stash from the home country a pack of narrow plastic bags. To make ice candies at home in Guam, incorporating the flavors of the Western Pacific at The Scent of Green Bananas.

STILL PINOY: WITH A TOUCH OF INTERNATIONAL STREETSIDE EXOTICA

Mike was only allowed some sorbetes and pork barbeque during his childhood in the Philippines, but he discovered the tasty bopis in the jollijeeps in Makati. For this event he shares with us at Lafang some “tasty” streetfood treats in Malaysia and Brunei, where he is currently based.

Toughened up by her former fulltime student activist days, Annabanana had no qualms about gorging on isaw, but this is sadly unavailable in Korea, so she teaches us how to make tteoppoki, the favorite streetfood of Koreans.

Iska is an adventurous eater, having eaten so many kinds of Pinoy streetfood that she may have beaten all of our streetfood consumption combined. And by the name of her blog, Edible Experiments, she is also an adventurous cook. Thanks to this spirit, we can learn how to cook marbleized quail eggs good enough for Easter, sans the egg shells. But more than that, she presents us with the super exotic streetfood spread in Beijing, where she is now based.

---

You can read about the Filipino streetfood culture/scene here.

---

Thank you all for the "sport" spirit. Hope to see you, and still more of us, in the succeeding Lasang Pinoy events. Mabuhay!

Lasang Pinoy conceived and launched by Karen and Stef.

My appreciation to Mike for the LP3 button, and Iska for the variations.

Lasang Pinoy 4, to be held November 20-25, is hosted by Minette.

BBM2: Package From The Big Apple

Last Thursday I received a small pink card directing me to proceed to the customs office of the Philippine Postal Corporation. I wasted no time, and upon arriving there I was handed this box containing goodies from no less than New York, that melting pot of a diverse array of cultures, and of course, of all things edible.

The package was sent from Binghamton, assembled by Dev, a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, who is also doing her doctoral studies on comparative politics and international relations. Wow.

Dev was my swap buddy in the international food swapping activity Blogging By Mail 2, this round hosted by Samantha, first conceived and hosted by Nic of Bakingsheet.


Here are the contents. Photo shows the different kinds of munchies contained in small plastic bags. Dev enclosed a card saying the items were either food that she loved or she chose them because they looked fun and interesting. As enumerated, I will try to identify each. Clockwise, from top: garlic sesame sticks, olive oil crackers, a delicious shortbread that was not in the list, praline soy nuts, and sugar and strawberry buttons.

When I laid everything on the table for a photo session, my son couldn't keep his hands off the goodies. Same with his dad, and they would have consumed all of the strawberry cookies had I not noticed and digged in myself. They were delicious, with a faint hint of tanginess, and looked attractive, too, that's why my son singled them out. Needless to say, we are all strawberry and all-things-made-with-strawberry fiends, so this one was a serious hit.

I loved the shortbread, and I stashed them away for a little treat for myself. The following morning I woke early, and finding everybody still asleep, I took the shortbread from their hiding place and proceeded to eat them leisurely with the Bellagio Caramel Praline flavored gourmet hot cocoa that Dev sent, "because it's getting cold here in the US." Great combination.

The soy praline nuts are Dev's favorite snack item, and they became mine, too. They were reminiscent of our own peanut brittle, minus the unwieldy caramelised sugar. Garlic and sesame seeds are mainstays of savory foods I prefer to eat and cook, so I was delighted to find both of them in one snack. Dev wrote that the olive oil crackers are good with cheese, but being a little salty, I opted to eat them on their own to savor my first taste of them. They turned sweet while I chewed on, and I remembered a gradeschool textbook saying a cracker will become sweet when chewed because the carbohydrate will turn into sugar. They paired nicely with the African Bush tea, of which Dev also sent several teabags.


The Tazo African Red Bush tea, from South Africa, was a wonder, a blend of African rooibos (red bush), hibiscus, lemon myrtle, lemon verbena, orange peel, rosemary, lemon balm. If I were shopping for tea and I saw all these listed as ingredients I would have bought boxfuls myself. Although I didn't need to look at the ingredients in this case because the name of the tea was enough to catch my attention. Tazo claims Lucy, our primate ancestor who lived millions of years ago in Africa, would have sipped an African Red Bush tea.

So I felt transported to the beginnings of time as I sipped the tea. The prevalence of lemon ingredients made it tangy, making it unnecessary for a squeeze of lemon. Dev suggested mixing some honey in it. The spicy aftertaste was wonderful, and I liked inhaling the aroma. And I feel robust from its anti-oxidant powers.

Inserted in the corners of the package are the rest of the loot: a bottle of cracked pepper and thyme mustard, which I still have to taste and find a way to use, a bar of bittersweet Scharfenberger chocolate and a bag of Ghiradelli caramel almond chocolate bars from San Francisco, a pumpkin cookie cutter ("for fun"), mallow candies which are Dev's favorite Halloween candies, and a bag of colorful chocolate sunflower seeds, which Dev included because they looked so pretty. They are not in the photo because my son had already comandeered them to be his own.

The parcel arrived in time for my son's birthday. Dev, you made one three-year old very happy with the treats. And a mother very appreciative of how you shared your favorites. I was in New York City for about a week many years back, and there was no way I could have found and tasted the treats you sent. Thank you.

Here's the link to the round-up of the entire swap at Samantha's.

Lasang Pinoy 3: Cebu Streetfood

I've shared so many years of local and international travel adventures with this very good friend from way back in college. He is a very visible hotelier who hates hotel food, but is a real authority on all things epicurean, from hors d'ouvres to isaw. He has been featured in various publications, but now I'm delighted that he is joining us for Lasang Pinoy 3, writing from Cebu where he was based for a time.

FOOD TRIP
Liloan: Bastion of the Light (and other Delights)
By Calvin Galera

What do you do when you want to go out of Cebu City but your busy schedule won’t allow you to get that far? What do you do when your taste buds want something different and adventurous but your choices in the city is nothing but ordinary?

Embark on a food trip. Albeit a not so distant one.

Thirty minutes out of the city proper, or 45 minutes depending on how you want to enjoy the ride, is a perfect weekend foodtrip getaway – Liloan.

Liloan (in Cebu) is probably what Bulacan is to Luzon. It’s basically the first logical stopover for a quick bite and trip to the loo (at Jollibee usually) at the first leg of your trip. Or, the last pit stop (for pasalubong of Titay’s Rosquillos and torta) on your last leg before you hit the city proper on your way back.

Of course people go to Liloan for the parola (lighthouse). But for the seasoned out-of-towner, Liloan is just one of those quaint towns reminding you that, alas, you’re out of Cebu City proper! One does not know that beneath its homely charm is a treasure trove of gustatory delights waiting to be discovered.

Sunday is probably the best day to go. Besides being a day of worship, Sunday is traditionally a tiangge day for people in the area. Within the church vicinity is a flurry of activities - blur of colors, bursts of aromas and cacophony of sounds. Your eyes dart from one stall to the other: buckets of fresh flowers, multi colored toy balloons, carts of fresh fruits. Voices of vendors try to outdo the tolling of the church bells. And the aroma of food – whoa! It more than makes up for the chaotic pace of the place.

You see a whole lechon being cut, fresh from the roasting pit. You smell and it makes you wanna reach for a puso (hanging rice) from the next stall. Nokos (squid) are grilled alongside mamsas (jackfishes) and molmols (parrot fish). Endless rows of chicken Bisaya tumble and roll to barbecued perfection.

We have never seen such a variety of side dishes sold anywhere else in Cebu. It’s turo-turo style, with colorful delicacies in plastic bubbles – atsal (pickled papaya), atchara, and guso (seaweed). Or go Fear Factor style with swake (sea cucumber) and tuyom (sea urchin).

Do not miss the fresh lato salad. Ask the manangs to make it for you a la minute. The tangy tomatoes and the pungent shallots provide the perfect foil to the deep sea flavor of these emerald colored seaweeds. Heaven.

But before you set your heart too much on embarking on this trip, a word of caution. Familiar with the adage “When in Rome do as the Romans do”? Well, be prepared to enjoy the food like the locals do - eat with bare hands, al fresco, by the road. Not a good preposition but believe me, it’s pure gustatory delight. Liberating even. As they say, “The road to bliss is not paved in gold.”

Adto na ta!

Happy trip.

Lasang Pinoy 3

Lasang Pinoy 3: Pangasinan Streetfood

[Intemtem/Tupig]

Streetfood was forbidden in my childhood, along with "bad" and/or "adult" things like coffee and Coke, and anything vended in bus terminals and bus stops, and aboard passenger buses. Being the obedient child that I was, I totally removed myself from the streetfood scene. My self-control received tremendous help from the fact that I was given no pocket money going to school. Since my mommy taught in the same elementary grade school I attended, I could always go to her classromm if ever I got hungry. Which I did not, having been raised in a household where merienda was not a daily feature, except during summers when mangoes were in abundance, but that is another story.

So I never got a taste of softdrinks in childhood, as well as milky ice scramble topped with leche flan, sweet spicy dilis, Chippy, Cheeze Curls, prawn crackers, kropek, Bazooka Joe, juicy fruit, tootsie rolls. I'm enumerating these specifically because these were the recess items I salivated for which my classmates so adultly bought and drank and munched on, particularly my childhood bestfriend and neighbor who had big balons (pocket money) daily.

This I carried on until adulthood, so much so that I could never bring myself to drink coffee voluntarily until now, and I reel from the impact of soda in my mouth and in my stomach. I tried a Starbucks one time, and I stared at the ceiling the whole night due to the foreignness of the caffeine in my blood. And up to now I cringe at the thought of eating fishballs and isaw, and my husband laughs at me.

But my aversion to streetfood was vindicated during my first days at work. I was brought by some officemates to the fishball joint in front of our building, and I gamely partook of the fare. I went down with LBM the next three days, and so did my fishball companions. The fishballs themselves were not the culprits, though. It's the sauce, which harbors the saliva of all those buying fishballs, dipping and re-dipping them. This has already been remedied by the requirement that hawkers have paper plates on which to pour on the sauce. If the hawker does not have any paper plates, then it is best to dip the fishballs in the vinegar, and only once.

It's actually so amazing how varied streetfood vended on portable cooking carts are. We have hot mami (noodle soup), lugaw (congee), all parts of the chicken and curdled pig's blood marinated and grilled over live coals, even day-old chicks, and unhatched ducklings, and now we have fried bopis (pig lungs) on sticks.


But back to my childhood. My parents made some exemptions to the streetfood we could not eat. One was the hot pan de sal in tin containers carried on bicycles very early in the morning, waking you up with its horn going toot-toot! Second was the sorbetes, denigrated to the name of "dirty ice cream," whose tinkling bells in hot afternoons always brought joy to us children. And third, balut, of which I could eat up to six pieces, but only the yolk, because I am squeamish about the duck embryo. My parents used to eat my left-overs, now my husband gladly takes over.

But the best streetfood I was allowed to eat, and which I think best represents the streetfood scene in Pangasinan, is the intemtem, known outside Pangasinan by its Ilocano name, tupig. It is made of ground rice, sugar and buco (young coconut) strips, rolled and wrapped in banana leaves, then grilled over live coals. All ingredients considered staples in the pronvincial food scene.

It is the quintessential provincial product - hand-made by old women using all local ingredients with a recipe handed down orally, untouched by machines and preservatives thus perishable, not available 24/7, comes in uneven shapes and sizes, packaging will not survive long distance transport, quality is not assured at all times, and cooked right before your very eyes.

I don't know where it originated, because we have tupig hawkers in the Ilocano parts of Pangasinan (popularly in Carmen, Rosales, the junction leading to and from Ilocos, Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija), intemtem in the inner towns of Pangasinan, and there is tupig, too, in Camiling (the border town of Tarlac). I don't know whether the incorporation of some parts of Pangasinan to La Union, or the close proximity of some towns to Ilocano-speaking provinces, is connected to its origins, but what I can surely say is that intemtem is grilled and vended in churchyards, and along streets leading to churches, in almost every town in the province.

The best intemtem used to be sold in the pilgrimage town of Manaoag. They were fat, moist, with generous slivers of young coconut. But that was in the past, they have commercialized so much so that they now resemble the tupig sold in Carmen.

And yes, what I'm saying here is, the tupig vended along bus stops are of inferior quality. They are so dry, very thin, greasy, with almost no coconut and the rice isn't ground smoothly. A good intemtem should be eaten hot off the tin grill, wafting the aroma of burnt banana leaves, cooked to the inside but still moist and sticky, not soggy, slightly sweet, with coconut strips ripping off the intemtem as you take a bite.

Intemtem vendors in my hometown of Malasiqui, as in the other towns, sell only during Sundays when everybody goes to church. I always have them as a hot, pre-breakfast treat after morning mass. The rare indulgence keeps the intemtem a favorite streetfod that is looked forward to every week. For this I would gladly eat on the streets, with my parents' wholehearted approval.

Recipe here.

Lasang Pinoy 3

Lasang Pinoy 3: MRT Streetfood

[Chocolate Marbled Suman]

My UP org batchmate, who subsequently became a best buddy and college days karamay, or life-saver, to be more apt, and on to being a constant movie and food adventures companion, is featured here today. He actually wants to start his own blog, but hasn't gotten the motivation to do so yet, so I sort of twisted his arms so he could join LP3 sans a blog. Being the best friend that he is, he didn't say a word, and came up with this entry.

MORON: The Reluctant Street Food
By Edwin S. Estrada

Kai was a bit hesitant when I told her that the street food I was going to write about for Lasang Pinoy 3 is moron, a sticky rice delicacy from Leyte that’s been sprouting in Metro Railway Transport (MRT) stations all over Metro Manila. I sensed that the crux of her hesitation was probably that my suggested subject matter didn’t quite fit her notion of what a street food should be – popular, ubiquitous, cheap and found along, well, the streets. (Should I include dirty-looking as one of the characteristics of a true-blue street food?)

Moron is not that popular yet, being fairly new in the street food business (though it’s slowly gaining recognition among the middle-class). I only started noticing the moron stalls a couple of years back. It’s ubiquitous in a way, if you consider the MRT as a major transport mode today for hundreds of thousands of commuters in the metropolis. Cheap it is, at ten pesos per piece. The only conceptual hitch is that moron is not sold along the streets but in MRT stations. But who cares? Personally, street food does not necessarily have to be sold along the streets. As long as it’s cheap, popular (or starting to be), and found along accessible transport routes, it is street food!


So why did I pick moron as my subject matter? To be honest, I wanted to choose a more traditional Filipino street food like fish balls or banana-que. Kai wanted a more exotic type. When we passed by an MRT station one afternoon, I found my topic like it’s the missing puzzle to the mysteries of the universe. Right in front of us was a moron stall, with a bundle of moron neatly presented on a folksy wooden container. I bought some for us to taste. It had a delicate taste, quite simple but flavorful. It’s made from grounded malagkit rice flavored with high-grade chocolate and wrapped in banana leaf. It looks like a big fat cigar actually, sans the harmful substances. I’ve heard that almost every town and city in the province of Leyte produces the tasty and filling snack. It’s perfect to eat anytime of the day – in the morning if you’re in a hurry to get to work but haven’t taken breakfast yet, during lazy afternoons for a quick energy-booster, and in the evening as a pang tawid-gutom (stomach-filler) before having dinner.

I quite developed a liking for moron. It’s a street food that’s tasty, filling, healthy, and above all, uniquely Filipino.

Lasang Pinoy 3

Related Post
Kai's Homemade Moron Recipe

Lasang Pinoy 3: Streetfood in Daet

Here is a list of the favorite streetfood of a kindred spirit, a self-confessed Doreen Fernandez disciple, while growing up in Daet, Camarines Norte.

LANZONES
From his trips to Manila, this is standard pasalubong by my Dad who passes by Laguna together with otap, a biscuit which will cover you in crumbs and flakes when eaten. It is at its sweetest in the month of October, others say, more so when its fruiting season is about to end, like a bittersweet farewell. My sister and I and our maid used to gorge ourselves until our stomachs ache in bilaos (winnowing baskets) of this fruit, careful not to smear the sap (from the branches and in the fruit's skin) on our eyes, forewarned by the elders that we will be blinded by some poison in it. In our binges, we were joined by the black ants crawling through the mounds of fruit, their dainty bites, however, not detterring us from our enjoyment.


ICE SCRAMBLE
Since kindergarten, I have been dead curious about this forbidden refreshment of my classmates. Forbidden by my parents because it was dirty - the used glasses were just dunked in a pail of turbid water then it was ready for the next batch of users, and it was sweet and cold - bad for my tonsils. But for five centavos (there, you can guess how ancient I am!) you got about five glorious slurps from a serving and get to choose from various colors (cherry red, pink, orangey orange) and flavors. Once, I hid from my dad who fetched my sister and I after school and sneaked a glass. The ceremony of crushing the ice manually in a rotating ice scramble contraption and putting in the flavoring and a small can of alaska milk was pure fascination.

GALYANG
This was a treat mother used to bring from her Saturday sojourns in the market. A wild cousin of the taro, it grows in swampy shaded areas, to a height as tall as coconut trees and is so hardy, my mother told me the gatherer had to use an axe to harvest it and cut into small serving pieces. It is sold by the old women along the streets leading to the market, wrapped in banana leaf, boiled in ginger, salt and water. Because I was such a greedy child, I used to eat three pieces of this rootcrop as an aperitif for a lunch of tinolang manok with sili leaf and green papaya. The native chicken was gamy and needed hours to cook and soften. So while waiting, I munched on the galyang. Sarap!

Lasang Pinoy 3