Cooking & Ripples/Photo-Hunt

Not the usual cooking method we normally see nowadays.  I was in Midnight Mercato and spotted these vendors cooking bibingka and puto bumbong---types of rice cakes, the traditional way.  Bibingka is a mixture of rice flour, sugar and coconut milk---other ingredients vary from each region.  The bibingka I grew up with has strips of young coconut meat and top is brushed with margarine.  

Puto bumbong is steamed rice cake made from a variety of glutinous rice which has a distinctly purple color, soaked in salted water and dried overnight and poured into bamboo tubes and then steamed until done.  Now, fabricated tin steamer with tubes is used.  Muslin cloth is used to cover the tube opening. 

Puto Bumbong

Traditional cooking of bibingka is time-consuming.  The mixture of rice batter is poured into terra cotta container lined with banana leaf.  The terra cotta container is placed on a charcoal stove, then a tin container with pre-heated coals is placed on top of the terra cotta container.  In short, bibingka is cooked with coal embers from the top and bottom.

Cooking bibingka is a common Filipino metaphor to describe life's difficult situations.

I love the distinctive smoky smell of charcoal and banana leaf.

Wanna share these bibingka with me?  They're perfect with coffee.

Bibingka

Sand ripples at low tide.

Linking with Gattina's Saturday Photo-Hunt

and Sandi's Photo Hunt