How To Cook Tinungbo

Ilocos food tinungbo

Tinungbo is the traditional method of cooking rice mostly in the mountainous part of Ilocandia.

Very few this way is being done now, during special occasions and picnic only.

Tinungbo is when you cook rice not using pan but bolo-- a kind of bamboo with thin layer. Bolo is the best kind of bamboo because of thinness that makes the heat penetrate inside and rice easy to cook.

How to cook tinungbo?

1. Choose one node of bamboo and in one end make hole.
2. Put the cleaned rice in the hole.
3. Add right amount of water.
4. Make some fire with firewoods and above it put the nodes of bamboos with rice.
5. Cook in time turning the bamboo once in a while.

Immediately served the cook rice. This is the best time to eat tinungbo, while it is still hot. Serving tinungbo after hours will make the rice harder.

Tinungbo has the distinction of taste because of the bamboo. While cooking may be challenging because of the right amount of heat but having it in the meal is fulfilling.

With rice cookers and modern tech of cooking in the kitchen trying this old school way could be rewarding to our feeling.

Buridibod Dish

Know this, buridibod dish cannot be buridibod without the rootcrop kamote as main ingredient. This makes difference to famous dinengdeng-- another homegrown recipe of Ilocanos.

Of course, one of the vegetable that should be in the recipe is edible tree fruit called allukon. Allukon is ab elongated kind of soft and furry fruit about the length 3 to 5 inches. It is colored green but when fully ripen turn to brown. There's a variety of tree that round shape fruit of allukon that is also edible and most preferred by other regions.

Then there's kumpitis a kind of green and common pod bean but only smaller. The fruit is harvested when not fully ripe because it is the best time to consume the bean.

There may be other ingredients like string beans, squash blossoms and others but the most important is the kamote rootcrop.

One best ingredient to add aside from these vegetables is fish. A grilled or fried tilapya or bangus make this soup based dish very alluring to have in the table. It is not advisable to add kind of meat. Fish just make the dish awesome.

Buridibod is a great alternative against dinengdeng or inabraw and other veggy dishes like pinakbet.

Of course, do not forget the bagguong to saute the the taste to make the dish very Ilocano.

Homecook Sinigang Na Malaga

If there is one dish that Ilocano usually cook, its sinigang. Living mostly in coastal areas, the abundance of fishes just make it one of the favorite main ingredient of the soury soup base dish. And malaga fish is one at the top of the list of the fishes considered for sinigang.

Malaga is an indigenous fish commonly found in the river where the saltwater and freshwater meet. The right salinity of the water makes this flat and mean fish grow suited to what it needs.

How to cook Sinigang Na Malaga

What you need:

3 kg malaga fish

1 bundle of kangkong (horse radish) young leaves

5 pieces non-hot chili

3 okra (lady finger fruit)

Gabi, mashed

1 cup juiced tamarind

3 pieces tomatoes

Onions

Patis (fish sauce)

Seasoning

5 pieces shrimps

2 pieces string beans

PROCEDURE

1.       Boil water

2.       Put mashed gabi and then tomatoes

3.       Put other vegetables like the string beans and cook for a half minute

4.       Put okra and then malaga fish and cook for 2 minutes

5.       Put all other ingredients for 3 to 5 minutes

6.       Serve