Fruits of the Heat

It's doomsday all over the news. The El Nino - the unusual warming in the Equatorial Pacific - is a dreaded phenomenon this year. The Philippines' entire eastern length is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, after all, and the warm waters' normal effect on the country is devastating droughts.

El Nino has just arrived, but its influence is already felt massively. The once burgeoning San Roque dam, responsible for submerging northern Luzon last year is now almost dry. It's been very hot - summer hot, a month before the official start of summer - and showers have not come when normally February brings rains.

Already there are warnings of power disruptions and shortages for much of the year, since the country depends largely on hydropower. The bad side of being green....

One effect of El Nino, as though to make up for the impending doom, is the early arrival of summer bounty. And such abundance there is! We've had sweet, red huge watermelons and cantaloupes for Christmas, when normally the roads are lined with stalls selling these starting only in April.

Two months before the onset of summer, tomato plants are borne down with innumerable fruits that market prices have plunged down to Php5.00 a kilo (approximately 10 US cents). Farmers don't bother rubbing the fruits with kalburo (a chemical to hasten ripening) but run to the markets as soon as they've harvested to avoid having the fruits rot on the stem. It's us consumers who benefit, because we get fresh, sun-ripened tomatoes untouched by chemicals.

Of course this will not last. There's going to be a lot of belt-tightening in the months ahead. If I could bottle up fresh tomato sauce and stock them up, I would, but they don't last beyond a week or two in the ref. So in the meantime we're trying to enjoy the bounty as much as we can, slicing lots and lots of fresh tomatoes and eating them with agamang and fried and grilled fish.

We've been having lots of stews using fresh tomato sauce - I boil kilos and kilos of fresh tomatoes briefly, skin and deseed them, saute these with garlic and onions, then add chicken cut ups for afritada, or chicken fillet for marengo, or beef chunks for kaldereta, or balls of ground pork, and let the meats simmer for a long time, adding other vegetables in season when done, or topping the sauce on fried fish for a sarciado.

It's also a good time to have ragouts for pasta (hmmm, lasagna!), and homemade pizza using fresh sauce and kasilyo. And Filipino-style paella.


What else is flooding the market - onions! Small, thumb-sized onions, the pungent red and the tamer white, sacks upon sacks of them arriving every minute. The vendors have no time to wipe them clean, and they come dusty and still warm from the heat of the soil.


Roving carts overflow with them, enticing buyers to purchase in kilos. At an astounding Php15 per kilo from the Php60 a month before, how could anyone resist?


Native tomatoes, with skins thinner than an onion's, sweet and juicy, and come in all imaginable "blooming" shapes. Best eaten fresh, plucked still green because with the heat they ripen before you could blink.

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Crisps from Heaven

Well...not exactly. They don't taste like they came from heaven, like they want to claim, as they've been christened Manna Crisps. No, not heavenly - not heavenly soft, nor heavenly sweet.

They're the exact opposite. Unyieldingly hard - not even crispy - and almost bland but for a small hint of salt and the flavor of herbs.

I think what the creators wanted to come up with was a way to heaven, in the spirit of abstinence and sacrifice. Manna Crisps is perfect for Lent, at least for those who are serious about fasting. Or for those serious about dieting.

I've long been exempted from both, because for the last seven years or so, if I hadn't been pregnant I've been breastfeeding. But I did eat this last Ash Wednesday, sharing with many others from the big plastic jar container the crisps are sold in (those giant mayonnaise jars), after attending mass. I did eat lunch afterwards, of course. I'm not exactly heavenly.

Manna Crisps
Multiply Site
Cellphone Number (63)9167736372

Gundol/Kundol

It used to be, before pastries and cakes and ice cream concoctions and cold salads of canned fruit, that candied gundol* was one of two (the other is, by default, leche flan) featured desserts in any festive occasion. And I mean really festive - grand celebrations like Catholic baptisms and fiestas. And probably even weddings.

These occasions, in those more serene times not so long ago, were a field demonstration of home-cooking and bayanihan. And bayanihan - the time-honored practice of helping out your neighbor in preparing for a big event - is needed during feasts, because everything laid on the table, from the appetizers and soups to the salads and mains (actually, it's more of a smorgasboard of main dishes, mostly meat) up to the desserts and drinks, everything is cooked/made right there at home, where the feast was usually held, anyway.

And not just cooked, but the animals to be served were also slaughtered, cleaned and dressed and chopped to the appropriate cuts right there in the premises. Big wood fires were built, around which big, somewhat flat rocks were arranged, so kawas and kalderos (huge cooking pots and pans) could be put atop the fires for the occasion.

Homecooking was practical because occasions such as those mentioned above were usually a barangay (roughly the equivalent of a village) event. Just as everybody volunteers for the preparation, everybody likewise comes for the occasion, no invitation needed. As such, the slaughter of an animal to use all its parts, and the use of home-grown ingredients, including the fruits and vegetables, were economical.


So with the use of gundol, which grows abundantly. I associate gundol with fiestas because that is when it was usually served. But this is actually because our town fiesta is in January, when gundol - known outside the country as winter melon or wax gourd (Benincasa hispida) - is in profusion. The last and first quarters of the year are also choice times for binyag and kasal, and I have attended my fair share of those (what Filipino hasn't?) that's why gundol is festive food, for me.


Gundol is a pulpy, oblong gourd with waxy skin. It is similar to upo (bottle gourd), with as many seeds in the center, but the flesh is drier. It is eaten as a vegetable, again same as the upo, usually added in soups. But when I was growing up we never had it as a vegetable.


Gundol is always a candy for me. The thin waxy coating on the gourd acts to protect the fresh fruit, so it can be stored for a length of time. Candying it goes further in preserving it. Because it does not need chilling, it is ideal for serving in big occasions, when the ref is normally bursting at the seams and about 30% of the food usually spoils before the event. Its long shelf life is a guarantee that it can be made ahead.

Having said that, I'll add that it can be had anytime of the year, and there's no need for an invitation to a grand feast or wedding, or even a contemplation of gate-crashing a binyag, because it is sold year-round in the public markets around the province, at the puto kiosks in Calasiao, and in Romana's.


But in case you come across a fresh gourd, it's easy to candy a gundol. A vine sprouts at the backyard of my in-laws, and I happened upon a couple of fruits at the Malasiqui market one time, so I've had practice. Just slice open the fruit, scoop out the seeds, then cut the flesh into long, fat wedges. Drain these, then sun-dry.

not dry enough, and the slices were too French-fry-thin
- they should be in thick wedges

Three days of sun-drying in the cold, Habagat-fanned holiday season yielded a still moist gundol for me, but I guess about three days in the summer sun is enough. Spread the wedges on a single layer so they dry properly.

When dry enough, mix in white sugar and put on a thick-bottomed pan to cook, stirring constantly. The gundol will moisten, but will harden again when thoroughly cooked. Store in an air-tight container at room temperature, but I like eating candied gundol cold, so I usually store them in the freezer.


Commecially produced gundol candy are usually harder and whiter than home-cooked ones because of the addition of lime (dena in Pangasinan - the mineral calcium oxide, not the acidic fruit). Gundol is made to steep in a lime mixture overnight, which dehydrates and bleaches the fruit. Which is a good enough reason to make the candies at home.

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*The terms gundol and kundol are used interchangeably, and understandably because of the guttural similarities of the two initial letters, but kundol is more a Tagalog term and gundol is used more in Pangasinan.

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Bahay Kubo

Bahay kubo, kahit munti
Ang halaman doon ay sari-sari
Singkamas at talong, sigarillas at mani
Sitaw, bataw, patani


Kundol, patola, upo’t kalabasa
At saka meron pa, labanos, mustasa
Sibuyas, kamatis, bawang at luya
Sa paligid-ligid ay puno ng linga


Roughly translated as:

Bahay Kubo
(Filipino folk song)

Nipa hut, even though small
the plants surrounding it are varied and many
turnips and eggplants, winged beans and peanuts
yard-long beans, hyacinth beans, lima beans

wax gourd, sponge gourd, bottle gourd, squash
and there’s more, radish, mustard
onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger
the surrounding spaces filled with sesame

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Kulambo

Kulambo is Pangasinan-speak for tikoy, the soft, sticky snack made by mixing ground glutinous rice with sugar and water. I don’t know why it is called thus – the Tagalogs refer to kulambo as that netting put atop your bed to ward off mosquitoes as you sleep at night, which we in Pangasinan call, aptly, mosquitero/moskitero.

As much as the name is a curiosity, this tikoy is also distinct among all tikoys out there, even the pedigreed tikoys from China and Japan and wherelse, or at least those that I’ve come to know. There’s the Chinese New Year tikoy, which is like hardened paste (the school-age glue made from cornstarch) and requires a coat of beaten eggs before deep frying to render it edible. And the common Chinese tikoy roll encasing a filling of mashed kamote (sweet potato). And the Japanese mochi which are similarly filled but come in the shape of balls.

The only other Filipino tikoy I know, actually, is the Quezon tikoy, which I love and tried to replicate, and which I’m not even sure is also called tikoy. But whereas the Chinese and Japanese tikoy are almost translucently white, the Quezon tikoy is deep yellow from the addition of eggs and milk.

So kulambo is more Chinese, and Japanese, than Filipino. Its consistency and texture is like that of the Chinese New Year tikoy when melted from the frying, and is much the same as the common tikoy roll and the mochi, without the filling. It is sweet, and sticky, and smooth if made properly.

I don’t come across tikoy much like it across the Philippines, so that I find myself yearning for kulambo when I’m away from Pangasinan for long stretches of time.

Which is not a problem, since kulambo is not associated with any festivity, so is available year-round, found at the sections of Pangasinan public markets where rice delicacies are sold, displayed alongside puto, patopat, latik, suman, and in the kiosks selling puto in Calasiao. So I gorge on kulambo everytime I go home, as I invariably hit the markets and the puto kiosks in Calasiao.

But really, gorging is an exaggeration. I could only ever finish a small piece (about 3” in diameter, used to be sold for years at Php5), and no matter how much I want to eat more I couldn’t. Once I’ve finished one it feels in my stomach like it had coagulated all into one whole piece again, then absorbed all the liquids inside of me so that it sits there bloated and heavy, pressing on all my intestines.

And so because I could only eat so much at any one time I could never get enough of it. I dream of it, and dream of making it, and hoard it when I’m home, only to find molds on them days later because I and the kids could not finish all that I’ve bought.

So I don’t find it strange to be writing about kulambo right smack at the start of the year. Because it is shaped into fat little disks, and is sticky, it always has its special place on the media noche table on New Year’s eve. It was the only manageable thing I could come up with, anyway, besides the puto. It was such an irritating experience shopping for a media noche feast when members of the household (not my own – we usually spend the holidays with kin) protested every little item I wanted to buy (no crabs, you’d be crawling for the rest of the year, no squid, it portends year-round darkness, etc., etc.), especially since nobody ever eats after all the fireworks. I've started hating those fortune tellers who feel they have the authority to dictate what people have to put on the table on New Year.

But as a side note, I’m glad that I can’t eat as much kulambo as I want to. Apart from not imbibing a lot of its superstitiously beneficial properties, I’m wary about absorbing any BPA or whatever it is in that soft, sweet delicacy. For kulambo is made this way – mix the three ingredients, shape into flat balls, insert into individual plastic bags, then dump the plastic bags in boiling water until done. A sort of sous vide, but I’m sure the water temperature is not as low. And even if it were, it’s still cooking in plastic. I don’t know how it was made before the advent of plastic bags, but for sure the plastic is for convenience – it makes for an efficient process selling something in what it was cooked in.

I should probably try making kulambo in a cake pan and steam it, like how I cook my other tikoy. It's bound to be too sticky and would probably make a mess, but it does not matter, since Chinese New Year is just around the corner.

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