Source: Bucaio
Buro is freshwater fish fermented in salt and ba-aw ( ba-ao, bahaw, steamed rice). It is the foulest smelling edible thing in all the whole wide world, but ironically, it is eaten as an appetizer.
Buro is actually a means of preserving seasonal freshwater fish from the times when electricity has not been invented. The prized fish dalag (mudfish), which comes out of hibernation during the rainy season, is salted and fermented with salted cooked rice to preserve the surplus. So are the native tilapia - small, thin and black - which burrow in mud during the dry spell.
These two are still the preferred fish to be fermented in a buro today, still as a means of preserving, but more as a way of keeping on with tradition. Nowadays it has actually attained the status of a native delicacy. The buro'n tilapia is the more common, with the buro'n dalag - since the fish is more rare, the flesh more tasty - commanding about Php250/kg.
I know buro is eaten in other places in the country, like burong talangka (salted fermented mud crabs) in Bulacan, burong hipon (small shrimps fermented in rice) in Pampanga, burong mustasa (salted mustard leaves in water) in Cavite, plus we also have burong mangga (salted unripe mangoes in water) in Pangasinan.
In Pangasinan, though, when you speak of buro - without any qualifier - you refer to the fish fermented with rice. The tang and fermented taste of buro is much, much more pronounced than any other buro outside the province. It is as sour as any spoiled food if you have ventured to eat some (I haven't, but I eat buro).
It is actually indescribable, and those who did not grow up with buro being served on the table will be really turned off by the smell alone. When I was a kid I could not tolerate it on the table if it were placed in front of me. But you get used to it, and once your tastebuds have desensitized a little, you will find that because you're eating it, it will propel you to eat a lot more than what you usually do.
I find this to be the greatest irony of all.
The process of fermentation is pretty straight forward - de-scale, de-gut and clean the fish, rub with sea salt, then mix with cooled steamed rice also mixed with salt. Store, preferably in a covered banga (clay pot) although nowadays it is kept in a plastic container. In three days the buro has fermented well enough to be eaten.
When in season, unripe, julienned labong is topped on the buro before it is fermented.
To tame the taste a little, fresh buro is sauteed with lots of peeled, thinly sliced ginger root and tomatoes. This somewhat defeats the idea of buro, because the tomatoes will shorten the buro's shelf life. But the sauteeing adds to the appeal of buro, enriching the flavors.
Buro is not eaten as an appetizer per se, but small amounts - pea-sized - is eaten along with every spoonful of the meal. It pairs excellently with any native viand and vegetable dish - usually fried or grilled fish, pakbet and dishes cooked in bagoong.
They say that not everybody can make buro - and I agree. Despite the small number of ingredients and the simplicity of the process, not all buro made come out the same.
I have smelled, and not eaten, the buro made by a grand-aunt, who had been the subject of so many grand green jokes and snickers from many of her housemates because of the smell of her buro. It had been called not just ma-anglit, but also ma-ampap. I am not going to translate what these two words mean for purposes of delicacy, but if you're not from the province go ask your Pangasinense friends. You will get my drift.
Filed under Food by The Pangasinan Blog.
Source: Bucaio
Lauya is the Pangasinan equivalent of the Tagalog nilagang baka, or perhaps bulalo with vegetables added, although the vegetables involved are a bit different. Owing to the Pangasinense partiality for saltiness in viands and anything eaten during a meal - the land is not called " the place where salt is made" for nothing - sweetness or any hint thereof is relegated to food eaten after a meal - dessert, or in-between meals - merienda.
And so lauya is more akin to bulalo, in that beef - the bones, the tougher cuts like shank/brisket and round, or the parts marbled with collagen like chuck - is boiled for hours until fork-tender, with only onions and whole peppercorns added. The long hours of cooking - even just an hour in a pressure cooker - renders the soup intensely flavorsome that little else is needed. Like bulalo, lauya is served with patis, kalamansi halves and finger chilies on the side for the diner to mix to suit individual tastes.
Lauya, though, like nilaga, can be considered a meal in itself because apart from the invigorating and revitalizing soup and the protein from the meat, vegetables are mixed in when the meat is done for added nutrients. What's added is what can be found in the province or in the nearby environs - native pechay from the backyard plots, and vegetables from Baguio City/Benguet province - potatoes, carrots, long green beans (commonly known as Baguio beans), onion stalks. When native pechay is not in season cabbage from Baguio is a good substitute.
But no boiled saba or halved ears of corn like in nilaga - the sweet hints will not be welcome.
I have heard that lauya is also the term used for exactly the same dish - comprising exactly the same ingredients - in some parts of Mindanao. I don't know who influenced who, but I gather the highlands in Mindanao produce the vegetables that are considered essential to the dish.
The long boiling hours melt the beef fat, the collagen, the bone marrow and what-have-you, thickening the soup a bit. Lauya should be eaten smoking hot, and fast, to prevent the cooling fat from forming on your lips. The soup alone is seriously artery-clogging that it is not a good proposition to cook lauya during the hot months. It is heavy enough, and you run the risk of developing a heart attack, swiftly.
It has been incredibly cool these past few days, though. I'm not sure if this is the temporary result of the convergence of three typhoons so late in the year in the country, but I'd like to believe the weather forecasters saying the cold is brought by hanging amihan coming down from the North. I hope it lasts, ushering in a cold Christmas season so extremely opposite from last year's. For I'm just starting to enjoy my lauya.
Filed under Food by The Pangasinan Blog.
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.
Inkalót A Bangós
Source: 
May 1 is observed across the globe as Labor Day. As the day falls on a Monday this year, it translates to a long weekend, as it is usually declared a special non-working holiday. An opportune time to schedule that long-postponed vacation trip.
Pangasinenses attach a special meaning to May 1, but for another reason. Because May 1 had also been observed for years in the province as Písta'y Dáyat, literally translated as "Feast of the Sea," which is a celebration in thanksgiving for the seas' bountiful harvest.
So it means a trip to the beaches surrounding the Lingayen Gulf, going across Tondalígan (or Blue Beach) in Dagupan City all the way to San Fabian which borders La Union.
One of the highlights of the celebration is the pageant to choose the Limgás na Dáyat, the "muse of the sea," (literally translated, limgás means purity), and her eventual coronation around midnight.
The past several years saw the stretching of the festival to about a month of activities, like all other festivities that have seen the light of commercialization, especially with the bid for fame with the longest bangós grilling station in the world. That development has since segregated the celebration to each municipality, with the festival in Dagupan City renamed to Bangus Festival, to properly attribute the source of the best bangós.
I've never attended a Písta'y Dáyat, for the simple reason that crowded beaches can be one of the most disgusting places in the world to be in, due from both the wastes littering the otherwise pristine waters and humans wasted by alcohol and too much karaoke. Even during the other holidays of the year we avoid the beaches like the plague.
But, of course, that doesn't keep me from commemorating the occasion. Just rub a fresh Bonuan bangós with coarse sea salt (from Pangasinan, of course) and plop over live coals, innards intact (excluding the gills and minute bile sac), grilling until the scales blacken.
Eating the hot, succulently sweet, fatty flesh dipped in Lingayen bagóong with a squeeze of calamansi is always a cause for celebration, for me. Even the scorched, sea-salty scales are not spared by Pangasinenses, as we eat the entire skin, leaving only the tail and big spine (the head is sucked to pieces).
The only things missing then would be the sand under my toes and the whiff of sea breeze playing with my hair.
But with bangós production on full scale across the country, buying real Bonuan bangós can be actually tricky. All bangós vendors in Pangasinan will say their bangós is from Bonuan, when about fifty percent of the time it is not. There are other bangós ponds in the province, after all. And some Pangasinan bangós can be maáblir, smelling and tasting like mud.
A skill is most of the time needed to differentiate the real Bonuan bangós from that just pretending to be one. But the most telling characteristic of a Bonuan bangós is its size - so great is the demand that it is rarely harvested past its prime length, which is about 15 inches. A jumbo bangós is from elsewhere and is best made into a relleno.
A small head (relatively stunted) and short tail, which means a longer body, are also characteristic traits of a Bonuan bangós, as an uneven tail (one prong is shorter than the other, although not so obvious at first glance). Scales are light grey turning to white.
A bulging stomach is considered first-rate bangós, as it spells heavenly thick fat that enhances the flavor of the fish as it grills. Pangasinenses are self-avowed bangós belly worshippers, including and especially those who eat bangós as pulutan. The latter always offer prayers for a miracle that would turn the bangós into an all-belly fish, the thick, black fat running from head to tail.
Such is this obsession that all bangós sold in the province have slit bellies to show how thick the fat is, which also shows how fresh the fish is from the overflowing innards. Which is to say, no bangós is sold without the proper incision.
Filed under Festivals, Events, Food by The Pangasinan Blog.
Insęlar a Bangús
Source:
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Bonuan bangús (milkfish coming from ponds cultivated in the coastal barrio of Bonuan in Dagupan City) has quite a legendary status for Pangasinenses, and such worship is entirely deserving. No other bangús, whether cultivated in Pangasinan or elsewhere, tastes like it.
True to its name, the flesh is milky and sweetish, the fat in the belly inducing nirvana. There are fewer bones and those pesky thread-like spines, and there is never a fishy hint in taste. Like eating pure cream in the form of soft fish flesh.
Of course it follows that the innards of the bangús are as milky and as fresh-tasting as well. Pangasinenses and Ilocanos have a habit of flavoring soups (including tinóla) with bagóong (salted, fermented anchovies). In a sinigáng, the bangús innards take the place of the bagóong, and you have a very flavorful, quite tasty soup. Even insęlar ya oráng (sinigang na hipon or shrimp in soured soup) uses bangús innards for flavor.
Restaurants along the beaches in Dagupan City cook sinigáng this way, particularly the famous Matutina chain of Pangasinan seafood casual dining.
To cook, fresh Bonuan bangús is sliced and put in a simmering pot of water flavored with a peeled ginger the size of your thumb, chopped tomatoes, sliced onions, salt and the innards, and calamansi juice (optional). When the fish flesh has turned opaque, add some kamote tops and continue cooking till the leaves are tender. Do not overcook so the fat will not disintegrate (very important!).
May I just add a note that it is critical to use fresh bangús, preferably newly harvested, and cook straight from the wet market. Never use previously frozen fish. If you only have access to the latter, it may be prudent to discard the innards.
Filed under Food by The Pangasinan Blog.
Inkaldít / Patópat
Source:
This is a traditional Pangasinan kánen (kakanin, rice pudding), made by cooking together glutinous rice, gata or coconut cream and sinákob (panutsa, molasses cakes) or brown sugar. Inkaldít to Pangasinenses residing in the central part of the province, patopát to the outlying areas with Ilocano influences. It is much like the Tagalog bíko, the difference is that the partially cooked rice is put inside onós - young coconut leaves stripped of its thin backbone or tingting - woven into fat rectangles, then steamed.
Like the Visayan pusô, too, although bigger, and this is sweet, and eaten by itself, for a late breakfast, perhaps, or mid-morning snacks.
The woven coconut leaf casing makes this delicacy handy, although it's a bit sticky (which gives good reason for indulging in the childish joy of licking fingers), and preserves it well. Unlike bíko, latík, or any other "naked" kakanin spread on a biláo (woven bamboo winnowing tray), inkaldít can last up to several days, and can be stored in the refrigerator, just needing some steaming to soften it up again.
Paradoxically, though, however pretty the lattice design the casing imparts on the rice, the "skin" makes it hard to get to the sweet, sticky treat inside. You would need a sharp knife to cut the leaves, and by the time you've realized that you've already smeared your fingers with the brown syrup seeping out of the weave, and you likewise smear the knife, making it slick-difficult to handle. But you don't want to wash your hands. You want to lick them. Go on, nobody's looking. But there's still the slippery knife. You lick it, too, the handle, the blade, and so you cut your tongue…
Next time remember to have a knife ready, and cut in the middle through the skin and onto the rice. You pull back the cut coconut leaves, proceed with dainty, tiny bites until the case is empty, consuming one of the two halves in three bites before proceeding to the second half. Three rectangles are sold knotted together, which logically tells you that all three means one serving for one person, and so you're welcome to eat them all. Just be sure not to eat anything else for the rest of the day.
When the glutinous rice used is newly-harvested, inkaldít is pure, soft, gooey bliss (so you understand how it can be eaten so fast). Some, though, mix in ordinary rice, making the inkaldít mabató (literally, "stony," or interspersed with hard grains, used to refer to impure grains and legumes). So you have to know from whom you're buying it, although in hard times that is no guarantee for really soft inkaldít made entirely of ansák-ket.
So if only I'm an expert weaver, I'll make some inkaldít myself. But until I learn the ropes, I just have to buy from trusted makers around harvest time up until about July, when planting time starts, and signals the time of gáwat (literally "to reach," but also used to refer to hard times).
Filed under Food by The Pangasinan Blog.
Palitaw with Coconut Sauce
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Holy Week is termed Àmbęlat Àgęw (again, all e's pronounced gutturally) in Pangasinan. It literally means "heavy day/s." I believe the term has profound psychological effects, since Holy Week has a pervasive air in the province. Maybe it has much to do with people being still very conservative when it comes to religious observances. All the same, as a child I remember Holy Week being sultry, the heat weighing on everything, and aggravated by the fact that you have to maintain a serious face all throughout.
Coupled with the general weightiness of the entire atmosphere is the fact that Lent, despite the heat, is characterized by the consumption of ansak-kęt (malagkit, glutinous rice), which is heavier than ordinary rice (it lands like a dead weight in the stomach). I don't know why, but this has always been the case.
Maybe it has something to do with harvest time (I've been getting many calls lately, informing me that I can pick up my rice and glutinous rice ration), and the seasonality of the ingredients, mainly rootcrops. The standard partner with which ansak-kęt is cooked - coconuts - is available year-round, though.
Anyway, I'm very unconventional, but family traditions which have been observed since childhood have gained sacred status that are very difficult to uproot. And so once again, I will be cooking and eating ansak-kęt, in its many variants. In spite of the heat.
Our version of palitaw is syrupy, and so does away with the "dry" toppings of grated coconut, sugar and toasted sesame seeds. It uses the same thin wafers of glutinous rice dough which are cooked once they rise out of the boiling water (that's why they are called palitaw, which means "rises up" or "pops up"), which are then mixed into the sweet sauce.
To make, soak desired amount of glutinous rice in water overnight. Grind the following day (most wet and dry markets have grinders, usually near the coconut graters). Take small pieces one at a time, forming them into thin discs approximately 2 inches in diameter. Spread each disc onto a plate - never stack one on top of another.
Boil a pan of water. Drop several rice discs onto the boiling water. Take out with a ladle each disc that goes up from the bottom of the pan to the water surface and lay on another plate. Repeat with the rest of the discs.
Boil about two cups of water (or more, depending on the amount of palitaw) with half a cup of white sugar (again, amount depending on desired taste), some anise seeds and slivers of young coconut meat. Stir until thick, but still runny (sauce will thicken some more when the palitaw are added). Mix in the cooked palitaw, and cook to desired consistency of sauce. Can be served hot or cold.
Filed under Religion, Food by The Pangasinan Blog.
Calasiao Puto
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One of the two standard companions to pansit guisado, that stir-fried salty and greasy dried stick noodles that is a staple fare in birthdays and other parties in the province, is the Calasiao puto, these teeny-weeny moist and bouncy semi-flat rice balls Pangasinenses are quite proud of (the other one being latik).
I grew up on Calasiao puto, and it, along with Manaoag puto, defined how puto should be for me. Needless to say, though I enjoy other kinds of puto made in and around the country, Calasiao puto is the special puto I hanker for and still serve during special occasions. Good thing the quality has not deteriorated over the years - in fact, it seems to have improved, the quality becoming consistent. This may be due to government efforts to promote the product, and regulating its production and sales.
This puto is made and exclusively sold, of course, in Calasiao, a town in the central part of Pangasinan where the Pangasinan language is exclusively spoken. Calasiao is also the second pilgrimage town in the province (after Manaoag), being the home of the miraculous Señor Divino Tesoro.
In front of the town plaza are lined up endless kiosks selling nothing but provincial sweets, the highlight and main come-on being the puto, heaped on the center of the table and sold according to weight, although until a few years ago it was sold by the number of pieces, the price pegged at a hundred of the sweet treats. Don't be daunted by this, because the Calasiao puto is the smallest of its kind, and one can easily finish half a kilo (or about 50 pieces) in one sitting (or maybe that's just me).
It is made from rice, still in the traditional way - ground via heavy flat stone grinders, sweetened then steamed. What you get is a small, glistening, moistly sweet white ball, embodying the perfect concept of makulnet (malagkit/maligat, I can't figure out the exact term in English and nobody I know knows either) that is a very far cry from the cake-like consistency and texture of other puto.
I don't know if it is the rice used (grown in the area?), the equipment used (worn by hundreds of years of use?) or the local water used to steam the puto, but the Calasiao puto can never be exactly reproduced outside of Calasiao, even in my hometown which is the neighboring town of Malasiqui. So beware! Just like how Bonuan bangus cannot really be bred outside of Bonuan, the "special Calasiao puto" you buy outside of Calasiao is probably just pretending to be the real one, although it may be a very close approximation. Unless, of course, you particularly know that the vendor bought the puto from Calasiao.
To further illustrate, just recently a Calasiao puto-maker was brought somewhere else in the country to teach the locals how to make Calasiao puto. Result - a close copycat but not the real McCoy, and the sponsor, who spent for the puto-maker's airfare and accommodation, was disheartened.
So this is just a long story to tell anyone out there who comes across this post and think of asking me for a recipe. Sorry. You can't make a Calasaio puto.
Me, I resigned myself to that fact, and I enjoy puto whenever I go to Manaoag and Calasiao, or really go out of my way to buy for special occasions. Ordering in advance is not necessary, since the puto is made and available round-the-clock, 24/7. I guess total production for a day can feed the total population of the province, and Pangasinan is the second most populous in the country.
As with other puto, it is good with cheese. In my family we serve it with grated cheddar/quickmelt cheese sprinkled on top of the heap, although I think this is unfair since the puto at the bottom do not get their fair share of cheese. I like them skewered on sticks like a barbecue with their individual cheese cubes. But, let me tell you a little secret, Calasiao puto is better spread with Kraft's Cheez Whiz, even the pimiento variety. The cheese spread is better attuned to the moistness of the puto than the dry cheese cubes.
There is also a kutsinta variety, which is as moist and sweet as the original puto. Definitely mas makulnet than ordinary kutsinta. Bite-sized, too.
Pictures courtesy of: and 
Filed under Municipalities, Food by The Pangasinan Blog.
Intemtem / Tupig
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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 provincial 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 Ilcoano-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.
Filed under Travel, Food by The Pangasinan Blog.
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