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Leo Mamicpic

Photos by:
Faisal Alih
Leo Mamicpic

They Keep The Home Fires Slowly Burning
Text and Photos by Pia Lim-Castillo
(Reprinted with permission from the August 2003 issue of Food Magazine, Manila, Philippines)

It's still traditional cooking for the women of Dumaguete, especially when it comes to making budbud kabug.

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Women in the provinces are keeping Filipino culinary traditions alive by preparing dishes using traditional techniques and ingredients. This was what I discovered at the start of my culinary research journey in the Visayas. Now becoming a rarity, these recipes and methods need to be archived as they form part of our culinary culture. In Dumaguete, for instance, one lady and her family have been making budbud kabug for over 70 years while three cousins continue to make the budbud sa Tanjay in the city of Tanjay. Budbud is the Cebuano term for suman.

Budbud kabug is a wrapped snack made of millet and cooked in coconut milk, available only in Dumaguete. With a pale yellow color akin to corn and a fine taste and texture. It is eaten with sliced mango and chocolate made from cacao grown in Dumaguete. Budbud kabug intrigues me because millet is not one of our indigenous crops. Dumagueteňos say that they have been making budbud kabug for over 100 years and millet is grown in the areas of Valencia and Siaton.

Millet is one of the oldest foods known to humans and is possibly the first cereal grain to be used for domestic purposes. It was used in Africa and India as a staple food for thousands of years and was grown as early as 2700 BC in China, where it was the prevalent grain before rice became the dominant staple. It's possible that this grain was transported to the Philippines via Chinese junks during the pre-Hispanic era. Millet is highly nutritious, non-glutinous and not an acid forming food so it's soothing and easy to digest. Flavorwise, millet is tasty, with a mildly sweet, nut-like flavor, and contains a myriad of beneficial nutrients.

 Cooked millet ready for wrapping.

My hosts in Dumaguete, Verna Alih and Cecilia Bermejo, engaged Josefina Lagahid to teach me how to make budbud kabug while Ema and Arsenia Girasol and Didi Guevarra taught me the making of budbud sa Tanjay. Each lesson took half a day as the process of making budbud is long and tedious. Click here for the Budbud Kabug Recipe.

Josefina Lagahid learned how to make budbud kabug from her mother, who made budbud daily for over 50 years until she passed the task to Josefina. She is one of five children raised on the proceeds from the daily selling of budbud at the Painitan, which their family has been a part of for over 70 years.

Most people would rather buy budbud than make it because it takes several hours from start to finish. Josefina and her husband, Icoy, spend every afternoon making about 200 to 300 pieces to sell in the market. If you find yourself in Dumaguete, go to stall #24 of Lita Sison and get yourself some of Josefina's budbud kabug. If you order two days ahead, you can pick them up in the market, ready to bring with you as pasalubong.

Josefina & Icoy Lagahid in their kitchen tend to the final stages of steaming the budbud kabug.

Josefina's "katas ng budbud kabug" is a heartwarming story that is part family nurturing, part culinary tradition. She has not changed her methods, sticking to tradition rather than doing shortcuts, no matter how tempting that my be. She and her husband raised their son Ryan and put him through college purely form earnings derived from budbud.

Another Dumaguete specialty is the budbud sa Tanjay, which the town is known for. During fiestas, the people conduct competitions for the best budbud sa Tanjay. The three ladies who taught me how to make budbud sa Tanjay, Arsenia, Didi and Emma, remember their lola and their mothers training them to make it.

Emma and Arsenia Girasol with Didi Guevarra,
makers of budbud sa Tanjay.

The process of making budbud sa Tanjay is similar to budbud kabug except that pearly white, long grain glutinous rice is used and the final method of cooking is boiling instead of steaming. The quality of this budbud depends on the glutinous rice, which must be pure, and on proper cooking techniques (no shortcuts). The rice takes about 30 to 45 minutes to cook, with continuous stirring. When the whole mass starts to look like an erupting volcano spewing out steam, sugar is added and stirred until well mixed. The budbud is cooked when a bamboo stick can be pulled out of the rice mixture without rice grains sticking to it, at which stage the milk from the coconut becomes converted to oil. The fire is then lowered and the casserole covered with a tight fitting lid for another 15 minutes.

Stacks of budbud sa Tanjay in pairs ready for the last stage of boiling.

For variety, there's a budbud called balintawak where one third of the cooked rice is mixed with tablea or native cacao. These are rolled separately then intertwined to look like a candy cane before they are wrapped in banana leaves. Wrapping them tightly is essential to ensure that the flavor of the budbud will not be adulterated during the last stage of boiling.

Intertwining the chocolate and rice portion before wrapping for a more delicious flavor.

Once the budbud is wrapped, the bottom of the casserole is filled with shredded pieces of banana leaves to protect the budbud from getting burned. With both ends tied, it is placed in enough water to reach one fourth of the casserole and allowed to go through its final cooking stage, covered. The budbud is cooked when you hear the crackling sound of frying oil (about an hour and a half). Properly and patiently cooked, without the use of shortcuts, budbud sa Tanjay is chewy, completely moist and will last a whole week unrefrigerated because the antibacterial properties of coconut oil protect it.

It is always tempting to cook easier recipes to shorten the process or even adulterate them for profit. Fortunately, these women have refused to succumb to these temptations and have continued to prepare local specialties the way their mothers and their mother's mothers have done before them.

Thanks to Josefina, Didi, Emma and Arsenia, Dumaguete's culinary traditions are kept alive, and we can continue to enjoy these delicacies in their purest form.

☻☻☻

Budbud Kabug Recipe
Yield: About 100 pieces of medium size sumans.

Preparation stage:

Cooking stage:

Wrapping and final cooking stage:

(Total time: 2-3 hours)  ☻
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