Source: Bucaio
Here is yet another variation of palitaw, that ubiquitous kakanin that is so versatile because it is just rice flour mixed with water - it is so bland that it lends well to any and any other topping. Or sauce, as what I seem to be used to. I wrote about unda-unday previously, which is how palitaw is eaten in my family - with a thick sauce of dissolved sugar and coconut strips.
The most common palitaw is the dry version topped with a combination of grated coconut meat, toasted sesame seeds and white sugar. As for masikoy - I never knew about it, that is, until I married and became immersed in my in-laws' food traditions.
As it turns out, masikoy is a perennial feature in handaans (parties) hosted by the many families in my husband's clan. It is an indispensable handa in any padasal - a novena prayer session held usually for the souls of the beloved departed, in remembrance of their birthdays or death anniversaries, and led commonly by the eldest in the community. My husband's family also cook masikoy during All Saints' Day/All Souls' Day, because they also hold padasal during this time and because it is harvest time - a premium time to eat new ansak-ket (malagkit, glutinous rice).
I like attending padasals, because these days it is one of the only two occasions when I can get to hear novena prayers in the Pangasinan language sung in keening fashion, called cantores, which also refers to the singers. The other occasion is during Three Kings, when cantores go from house to house singing about the birth of Jesus Christ during the wee hours of the morning, when I am usually so deep in REM that I can never get the motivation to wake up.
So a padasal is the most accessible, and the more common, event to get to hear cantores singing. A padasal is also always accompanied by a handa to refresh, and as a grateful gesture to, those who led the prayers and the others who joined the prayer session. As the ritual goes deep into our Filipino Catholic religious heritage, the food also represents deep cultural roots.
The handa will always have a kanen (kakanin, sweet treats made from rice). As the padasal remembers the dead, the handa features that which sustains the living.
It is almost sacrilege to serve any unknown dish (i.e., foreign-inspired, fusion, et.al.) during this occasion. There may be pancit, yes, but pancit has been so indigenized, and has featured in our cuisine for so long that it is considered a local dish. The drinks would invariably be softdrinks, because it is the most common, although if the host family is a bit up the economic stratum tsokolate is preferred.
Masikoy, or palitaw, is the embodiment of rural cuisine. Made from rice - the staple food - and adorned with coconuts, sesame seeds, sugar - all can be sourced from the backyard garden - it is absolutely home-made, the making usually a community effort, and cooked using ingredients that abound in the locale.
Masikoy tastes like regular (dry) palitaw, because the two variants basically have the same ingredients. The only difference is that eating masikoy is like eating ginataang bilo-bilo, with only the flat bilo-bilo as ingredient and with the flavors of dry palitaw, though the taste of toasted sesame is more pronounced. Masikoy
Ingredients
1 kg glutinous rice
1/2 kg washed sugar (more or less, according to taste)
1/2 cup sesame seeds
meat strips from 2 buco
gata from 2 mature coconuts*
a full pinch of anise seeds, pounded coarsely
pandan leaves, washed
a pan of water
Procedure
- Soak the glutinous rice overnight. Ground into dry flour the following day.**
- Grease your hands with a little coconut oil. Get a pinch of the rice dough and form into flat discs, about 2 inches in diameter. Alternatively, get a fistful of rice dough and roll into a long cylinder. Cut into 1-inch strips and flatten these into discs. Reserve about half a fistful and set aside. Lay the rice discs one by one on a large, flat plate, never stacking one on top of another.
- Dry toast the sesame seeds in a pan until brown.
- Heat a pan of water, dropping the rice discs when the water is boiling.
- Mix in the toasted sesame seeds, buco strips, sugar and anise. Stir well.
- Dissolve the reserved rice dough in about a cup of water and mix into the cooking masikoy, stirring occasionally.
- When the rice discs are starting to rise to the surface put in the pandan leaves.
- When all the rice discs have floated to the surface turn off fire and remove from heat. Let cool.
- Transfer to a serving container and pour in the gata (1st and 2nd gata). Serve cool, with a container of kakang gata to suit individual tastes.
*To Make Gata
machine-ground meat from 2 mature coconuts
4 cups water heated to boiling point
- Put the coconut meat in a big pan or basin. Pour 2 cups boiling water and mix thoroughly with a ladle. Let stand for about 5 minutes, or until the mixture is cool enough to the touch.
- Express the gata by getting fistfuls of the coconut meat and squeezing them thoroughly. Repeat until all the meat has been pressed.
- Separate the expressed gata from the meat by straining carefully through a fine sieve. The strained liquid is the kakang gata or 1st gata.
- Put back the coconut meat into the basin and pour the remaining boiled water, preferably reheated to boiling point. When the mixture has cooled, repeat steps 2-3. The 2nd strained liquid is the 2nd gata.
**Alternatively, commercially available powdered rice flour can be used. Make sure you use glutinous rice flour and not ordinary rice flour. Mix in a little water to make rice dough, and proceed to step 2.
*To Make machine-ground meat from 2 mature coconuts4 cups water heated to boiling point**Alternatively, commercially available powdered rice flour can be used. Make sure you use glutinous rice flour and not ordinary rice flour. Mix in a little water to make rice dough, and proceed to step 2.
Filed under Food by The Pangasinan Blog.
Bucaio blogs about her TV appearance on The Sweetlife, QTV which featured her cooking of Inlubi.
Here is a repost:
I demonstrated how to cook the Pangasinan malagkit (glutinous rice) delicacy inlubi for the Undas episode of The Sweetlife with Lucy Torres-Gomez and Wilma Doesnt, aired last November 1 on QTV.
I wrote about inlubi two years ago as an entry to the monthly Filipino food blogging event Lasang Pinoy. The food theme that time was soul food, and I specifically focused on inlubi because it is food in season during Undas or All Saints' Day/All Souls' Day. It is highly seasonal, turning up only during this particular time of the year. It is also distinctly Pangasinense, unknown and non-existent outside the province, except probably in the other areas of the Ilocos region. 
The researchers for the show wanted to feature halloween/ Undas food that is clearly Pinoy. Although it is not considered halloween/ Undas food in Pangasinan, its season and color - a very rare black - makes inlubi actually the perfect treat. What's more, I failed to mention to the production staff and in my post the fact that the making of deremen - the main ingredient in making inlubi - starts at twilight and goes on for the whole night.
This tradition is held onto dearly that you will never see deremen made during the daytime. A bit creepy, adding drama to the whole process, although one enlightened lola explains that the preference for making deremen at night may be because of the burning involved, thus the need to do it during cool hours. I may add, it is also rational that it is made during a time when it will not interfere with important chores. Since deremen-making is only seasonal, the family is usually involved in other activities to sustain a living the year-long.
The color and the process of making it are not only the distinguishing features of deremen/inlubi. Deremen is pinipig (young glutinous rice) burned in its husk and pounded, so that when cooked into inlubi it smells and tastes not only of the green ricefields during the rainy season, but of the burning ricefields after harvest as well.
Deremen is not planted for mass production. The difficult process involved does not command any premium - it is sold for roughly the same price as regular malagkit. Planting areas are also limited - priority is given, naturally, to the staples rice and malagkit.
These are the main reasons deremen cannot be found anywhere else - supply is only good for the province's demand. It does not keep, too, since it is young rice and still moist. So Pangasinenses enjoy inlubi only during deremen season, and wait for next year for another reunion.
For those who can travel to Pangasinan, deremen can be found in most public markets of Pangasinan towns and cities from October to early December. They're not found in stalls, vendors usually sit by the entrances or along the sides, with a bigao (bilao, woven winnowing tray) of the stuff in front. Buy the blackish-green type, not the very black one. The grains should be soft and a bit flat, not puffed up. The aroma is of burnt/smoky pinipig.
A can of deremen usually costs Php15.00. When asking, say deremen with all the e's pronounced like the e in brother, accent on the last syllable. Photo can be found here.
During market days (twice a week, schedules vary per town), cooked inlubi can be found sold with other kanen (kakanin, glutinous rice specialties) like puto and latik. But I should say these are of inferior quality. If you can procure deremen, it is much better to cook inlubi yourself. It is very easy, the cooking process simple and does not involve any complicated maneuver. You don't even need to have long cooking experience. INLUBIIngredients
2 cups deremen
2 cups kakang gata*
1 cup 2nd gata*
2 cups washed sugar
coconut strips from 2 buco
a few pandan leaves
a pinch of anise seeds, pounded coarsely
young banana leaves
Procedure
- Soak the deremen in water (about 1 - 1 1/2 cups) and set aside.
- Pour the 2nd gata in a thick pan and heat. When boiling, mix in the anise seeds, sugar and buco strips. Bring back to a boil, stirring occasionally.
- Strain the deremen and pour into the boiling gata, turning down the heat to medium. Stir constantly.
- When the mixture is starting to dry up, pour in the kakang gata. Keep stirring to evenly distribute the gata and to keep the inlubi from burning.
- Add the pandan leaves.
- The inlubi is cooked when the gata has been fully absorbed (about 30-45 minutes of muscle-wrenching stirring). It should be consistently sticky. Remove from fire and pick out the pandan leaves.
- Pass the banana leaves over fire, then brush lightly with cooking oil. Use this to line a flat-bottomed, shallow plate, oiled-side up.
- Transfer the inlubi to the leaf-lined plate, distributing to make it an inch thick. Let cool. Good for about 8 people.
The inlubi is best eaten cool. It will keep for about two days, longer if refrigerated. It can be eaten straight from the ref, or if preferred, heat in an oven/toaster on low for about five minutes and let cool prior to serving.
[The hosts sampling the pre-cooked inlubi I brought to the studio]
*To Make Gata
machine-ground meat from 2 mature coconuts
4 cups water heated to boiling point
- Put the coconut meat in a big pan or basin. Pour 2 cups boiling water and mix thoroughly with a ladle. Let stand for about 5 minutes, or until the mixture is cool enough to the touch.
- Express the gata by getting fistfuls of the coconut meat and squeezing them thoroughly. Repeat until all the meat has been pressed.
- Separate the expressed gata from the meat by straining carefully through a fine sieve. The strained liquid is the kakang gata or 1st gata.
- Put back the coconut meat into the basin and pour the remaining boiled water, preferably reheated to boiling point. When the mixture has cooled, repeat steps 2-3. The 2nd strained liquid is the 2nd gata.
Filed under Food by The Pangasinan Blog.
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