Watching the Via Mare recipes makes me think this early of the coming Christmas holidays, Stuffed Queso de Bola and Stuffed Turkey (or a large chicken) are already on my menu. And I have also been dreaming of Filipino Christmas treats like puto bumbong smothered with butter, plenty of shredded coconut and sugar while drinking hot tea. Black glutinous rice from Thailand (I wonder if the rice is originally from the Philippines just like the jasmine rice, more on this later) is readily available here in the US and procedure for making them is all over the Internet, the only thing missing is the steamer. But when I get a craving I can't seem to stop until I get to eat it. Luckily I have an Ikea silicone ice mold that has long and thin cavities meant for water or soda bottles which worked surprisingly well. Now I can enjoy puto bumbong any day of the year.:-)
1 cup black glutinous rice
½ cup white glutinous rice
½ cup regular rice
water
banana leaves
butter
shredded fresh coconut
sugar
- Mix rice with water to cover top 1 inch, set aside for 2 hours.
- Grind in blender until smooth. Pour the mixture on a large piece of muslin, twist the cloth and tie with kitchen twine, place on a large sieve. Put the sieve on top of a big bowl, weight down with a sauce pan filled with water, and leave 4 hours or overnight.
- The next day, crumble the damp rice paste and fill well-oiled molds loosely. Steam in boiling water for 12 minutes. Remove with a plastic chopstick onto banana leaves. Spread butter all over and serve with coconut and plenty of sugar.
I had these with cold-brewed green tea (instead of hot) which I declare is the perfect drink with puto bumbong.
About the jasmine and the black rice, I don't know if it is a unique Filipino rice because China also has its black rice variety, although non-glutinous. Thai black glutinous is the one being sold here in my area and I read somewhere that this variety is now being grown in California. Could the Thai black rice have come from the Philippines or China or maybe it's native to Thailand. I'm sure most Filipinos my age know that the white Thai jasmine rice was developed, or what is now called genetically engineered, in the Philippines in the IRRI, International Rice Research Institute, based in Los Baños, Laguna in the early 1960s. The GE rice was named and branded MILAGROSA (miraculous) and when it first became available to the Filipino public my father refused to eat it and had forbidden my mother from buying it. He was not willing to eat this 'frankenrice' because he honestly believed part of it is a variety of weed, yes weed, in the Philippines.
Read related article here: Part II, item I and if you LOVE to read here is an even longer study on rice varieties and development in the Philippines. It seems milagrosa has been around as early as 1915! I didn't know that.