Homemade Morón Recipe

The name of this Waray delicacy has accent on the second syllable, so it doesn't refer to those jerks you don't want to work with in the office. I don't know why it's called thus, but it's probably a local term that doesn't in any way relate to the highly popular English word with Greek origins.

It's something luscious, generates happiness and induces a state of high due to the pureness of the (dark) chocolate ingredient, as opposed to the imbecile qualities of the first-syllable-accented slang.

This kakanin got featured early on in the life of this blog, by a friend who participated in the Lasang Pinoy event I hosted about streetfood. There was this company selling Waray delicacies with outlets in Metro Rail Transit stations, which my friend considered to be streetside, but the kiosks have since disappeared.

So now Metro Manila denizens would have to go to Leyte for a morón fix, or should cultivate good relationships with Waray friends/relatives in hopes of receiving moron as pasalubong from home vacations, or better, receive gifts of morón cooked in homes in the metropolis.

I got acquainted with morón early on in my life because an uncle married a Waray. I'd get to sample thin rolls of morón during the rare times my family attended fiestas in my mother's barrio, where my uncle's family stayed. But more commonly morón was also served during celebrations of various milestones in my uncle's family. During that time, though, I was more interested in eating than cooking, so I never asked to be taught how morón was made.

For a class project in college, on the topic of food and culture, we imported binagol and morón direct from Leyte to feed the class while a guest lectured on food and its associations.

Then luck shined at work, where I got to meet and cultured a friendship with an office colleague from the town of Abuyog in the province of Leyte. Abuyog is famed for its morón, made by a people who are obdurate in protecting the quality of their product. Thus the Abuyog morón is unsurpassed, never commercialized (hopefully it stays this way).

So I await breathlessly every time this officemate goes home for the holidays, because at the end of vacation time a plastic bag of morón always lands on my office table.

All Filipino kakanin, which are made of rice and gata (coconut cream and/or coconut milk), are highly perishable. They are best eaten right after cooking, fast deteriorating within a few days, if they don't spoil right away.

It is the same with morón, so it can't be found outside of Leyte. It was one of my most highly anticipated things to buy during my Tacloban trip, so it was such a great big disappointment to bring home hard-as-plastic morón from Aida's at Zamora.

I was so frustrated that it actually compelled me to make morón myself, at home.

I've actually had a morón recipe for more than three years now, graciously given by a Waray cook/chef, who has used it based on the recipe of the most well-known morón-maker in Leyte. Several months after the delicacy was first featured in this blog I was contacted and was emailed the recipe. I've tried to cook from it previously, but my first two attempts were disasters.

Making morón is quite a tedious job, so it took me a long time to attempt a third time. The recipe is simple enough to follow, but the stirring and wrapping are muscle-wrenching and backache-inducing.

It also takes guts, if cooking with gata and malagkit is not one's expertise. My first attempt was actually a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Because I am not as well-versed when it comes to kakanin, I made morón when the family was in Pangasinan for a vacation, so I could solicit the help of an aunt-in-law, whom I considered (notice the past tense) the expert on all things made with malagkit and gata.

The recipe called for flour consisting of 75% ordinary rice (not glutinous), the fourth portion malagkit (glutinous). The aunt-in-law has a scrupulous cooking ethic, and she told me no way will she make suman that's not a hundred percent ansak-ket or malagkit.

And I agreed with her. Suman, that which citizens of Luzon are used to, made of whole glutinous rice grains, becomes hard when ordinary rice is used, or will feel like it is filled with tiny hard pebbles as it is bitten into when rice is mixed into the glutinous rice.

What we failed to consider was that we were using flour, not whole grains. Ground rice gains a sticky, soft consistency. So my first morón, made purely of glutinous rice flour, became a soft, gooey tikoy, steadfastly refusing to form into a roll but falling flat, and stickily so.

But it was delicious, and we finished it in no time, messily spooning it into our mouths. The next time I made it on my own. I can be stubborn, and I used an all-glutinous rice mix. Because I used commercially available pre-ground dry rice flour instead of soaking the rice and having it ground wet, I thought I'd get a different and much more better result.

The morón came out even stickier. I had to coax it into a pan, presenting it like a pudding, and we spooned from it because it was hopeless slicing it.

But my third attempt was providential. First I had all the right ingredients. I have great faith in the pre-ground, powdered rice flours available in public markets as well as in supermarkets and grocery stores because the quality is consistent. Glutinous as well as ordinary rice flours are available, though the ordinary rice flour is much more harder to find.

And second, the day I decided I'd make morón - last Saturday, the 29th of August - was the town fiesta of Abuyog, where there was a mania to make morón. So I was in sync with the spirit of morón-making, and maybe I was blessed with Abuyog's patron saint.

So here's the adapted recipe. I decided the original recipe, with four cups rice, would make too few suman for my big household, so I doubled it, along with the rest of the ingredients.

The morón was consumed in no time at all, and became my children's favorite. We had guests during the weekend, and they could not keep their hands off the treats. At ballet practice, my daughter brought no less than five pieces for her to snack on because she says she gets so tired by her exertions.

As for me, this is probably the best morón I've had my whole life. It's true, home-cooked treats are the best. Thanks very much, Agnes, for sharing the recipe. Now I, and my children, can have morón anytime!

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Morón

Ingredients
2 kilos grated coconut meat
8 cups boiling water
6 cups ordinary rice flour
2 cups glutinous rice flour
30 chocolate tableya, melted with 1/4 cup water
1 cup chopped peanuts
1 kilo muscovado sugar
1 bar cheddar cheese, julienned
1 small bottle vanilla extract
1 big can evaporated milk
½ kilo white (refined) granulated sugar
banana leaves, cut into 8"x10" rectangles, about 30 pieces

Makes about 30 4"-long pieces

Procedure

1. Put grated coconut meat in a basin and pour the boiling water. Set aside. (Alternatively, use the equivalent of 8 cups canned coconut milk)
2. Mix flours thoroughly until evenly incorporated. Divide into two equal parts.
3. When the coconut mixture is cool enough to handle, squeeze the grated meat, going around and repeating to ensure all the coconut meat have been squeezed. Strain the resulting cream in a fine strainer. Divide the cream into two parts.
4. Pour one-half of the flour in a thick-bottomed pan (preferably kawa or big kawali) and mix in one part coconut cream, the melted chocolate, the muscovado sugar, peanuts and vanilla extract. Mix over medium heat, stirring constantly. Uneven lumps will form at first, but keep stirring until the mixture evens out and thickens. When oil begins to come out, turn off heat, and transfer pan to a counter to cool.
5. Add the remaining coconut cream to the second half of rice flour, and mix in the evaporated milk and about half of the white sugar. Cook in a separate pan over medium heat, stirring constantly. Add more sugar to desired taste (not too sweet). Cool.
6. Pass the banana leaves over a candle on both sides so they become pliant. Then rub the squeezed-dry coconut meat over them.
7. Get a heaping tablespoonful of the chocolate mixture and put on the shorter edge of a banana leaf wrapper. Sprinkle cheese on it. Put the edge of the banana wrapper over the mixture then roll, the banana leaf covering the mixture so your hands don't touch it. Roll until the mixture forms into a thin cylinder. Place this in the middle of the wrapper. Get a heaping tablespoonful of the white mixture and put on the shorter edge of the same banana wrapper and repeat the procedure.
8. Put the two cylinders (chocolate and white) side by side, put the edge of the wrapper over them, then roll again, so that the two fuse into one thicker cylinder. Alternatively, coil the chocolate cylinder around the white one, then roll.
9. Put the cylinder on the shorter edge of the wrapper, then roll the wrapper tightly up to the opposite edge. The moron should have been rolled over no less than three times. Secure both ends by tightly tying with a string.
10. Repeat until all the two mixtures have been used up.
11. Steam for 45 minutes to an hour. Let cool.

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Notes:

• The original recipe called for three cups rice flour and one cup glutinous rice flour. I used six cups rice flour and two cups glutinous rice flour.
• Only 1/2 kilo white sugar was specified, to be added to the white mixture. I added muscovado sugar to the chocolate mixture because it was too bitter (the tableya is 100% dark chocolate). I loved it this way, as the muscovado added depth of flavor.
• I did not use up all of the half-kilo sugar for the white mixture.
• The original recipe called for a three-hour steaming. This is for those pans with an elevated slotted layer on top, with the water boiling below. The moron can be submerged in a pan full of water and boiled, for only 45 minutes to an hour. Just make sure the banana leaves have been rolled tight, the ends tied securely so that the water won't get into the moron.
• I used coin-sized, thin tsokolate tablea bought in Tacloban, which is available in all islands of the Visayas, particularly Cebu and Bohol, used for making sikwate. The sweetened tablea in supermarkets can substitute, about five rolls or 25 tableas. Omit the muscovado sugar in the chocolate mixture. I was told Valhrona dark chocolate will make the moron more luscious, and my friend from Abuyog says they use Hershey's liquid dark chocolate. I prefer to use tablea, though. It's in keeping with preserving its origins. And I like the tang of it. But if using a bar of dark chocolate, use about 200-300 grams.

*Waray is a loose term applied to natives of the islands of Samar and Leyte, in the Eastern Visayas region.

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