The Tree of Life (Part 2)

So, you've chopped down a fifteen-year-old sago palm, scraped out its insides, bathed them in water and kneaded and squeezed them dry, collected the starch from the bottom of your processing vessel, crammed it into waist-high cones you made from the base of the palm's leaves, left it to drain for a few days, and ended up with more sago flour than you'll ever eat in a year.

What to do with it?

If you're in Banza Barangay,Mindanao (Philippines), you might cook up some sago flatcakes called tumpi.

You'd begin by heating some sago flour - which is sometimes white and sometimes brick red and sometimes a shade in between - in a dry skillet so that later, when the tumpi are on the griddle, they don't get hard.

As the sago toasts it comes together in tough little clumps, so after emptying it from the pan you'd  break it up into small pieces.

Then you'd add freshly grated coconut and knead the two ingredients together with your hands, long and hard enough to thoroughly incorporate the coconut into the flour. (If you were in the mood, you might also knead in some mashed banana or sweet potato). You would add cane sugar, white or unrefined - enough, but not too much, because tumpi isn't as much a dessert sort of snack as it is a lightly sweet bit of nourishment.

You'd take balls of the sago-coconut-sugar mixture and pat them between your palms into flat cakes. (If you didn't want to be bothered with all that patting and pressing you'd skip this step entirely, and cook your sago-coconut-sugar mixture loose, for inisab.)

You'd put your sago pattycakes in a dry pan over a medium-high fire, and cook them on both sides until they're dark and a bit crisp,

and then you'd serve them to your visitors and chuckle at the way they rave over the crunchy-chewy texture of your everyday, no-big-deal creation.

Or, if you didn't mind expending a bit more energy you might try your hand at palagsing, mixing the grated meat of a coconut not as soft as buko (young coconut) nor as hard as the old coconut you grated for your tumpi with cane sugar, and then gradually adding in uncooked sago flour.

You'd spoon your palagsing 'dough' onto banana leaves, shaping it to form a log of sorts,

carefully wrap it side-to-side and tuck top and bottom edges under, and tightly tie two logs together, seam side in, to make water-tight seals.

You'd build a fire, bring a pot of water to the boil, and add the palagsing bundles.

After about thirty minutes you'd pull the palagsing from their bubbling bath and pull away their banana leaf cloaks to reveal tubes that, from a distance, resemble fat-marbled pork sausages.

You'd offer these, too, to your visitors, who would find them to be a fine combo of tender chewiness and - from the moist and super coconuty shredded fruit - crunch but who, residing in Malaysia (the home of gula Melaka) as they do, might think to themselves that as tasty as these palagsing are, the substitution of palm sugar for cane sugar would elevate them to a higher plane.

Comments

[arnie]

Reading your blogs became one of my to-do lists in the office.Awesome photos,interesting places, what else can you ask for!!By the way, I am very pleased about featuring Butuan City and nearby Barangays on your recent postings. I myself was born and raised in this abundant city,now based in the US with my family.

[Jennifer]

"the substitution of palm sugar for cane sugar would elevate them to a higher plane."

Hee!

[Robyn]

Thanks arnie - I won't tell your boss (about reading in the office). ;-) We have further posts in the coffer from Butuan City, so stay tuned....

Jennifer - just being honest. Yes, I am obsessed with palm sugar.

[gef]

nice pictures! i'm making a thesis about palagsing... you might wanna help me in some details...