A CHRISTMAS TRADITION: SUMAN aka Sticky Rice for the Christmas Eve Feast The elders in my family say: There should always be suman for Christmas. In the family, when my grandmother(Lola Flora) was still alive, she wraps the best suman in town(Im bias, I know). Sad that she was the only one in the family who can perfectly wrap the suman in place. Now, we ask someone from the barangay to wrap the suman for us. The suman is made of sticky rice(malagkit) wrapped in dahan ng palaspas(palm leaves). The adventure in preparing the suman is not only in wrapping it but also in cooking it! To cook, we set a kalan(stove pictured below). You have to have lots of firewood because it will take a long time to cook. When you start cooking it at 9am,it will be ready around 5 or 6pm. Thats also the reason why its not advised you use gas stove/electric stove to cook it unless youre rich and have no other options available. They also said that the best tasting suman is cooked patiently over the traditional kalan. All in all, the steps in preparing the suman are: 1. Wrap the sticky rice in palm leaves(sticky rice combined with salt and coconut milk) 2. Prepare your kalan 3. Put the suman in a big caldero/kawa or just simply in an empty biscuit tin can container 4. Pour water isang dangkal above the suman When cooking, you have to be vigilant in watching it. You have to make sure that the water will not reach critical level--that is the suman must always be submerged in water. My duty when we cook suman is to add the water--which I am very lazy at because I am not patient in waiting and constantly checking. So everytime, we have half the suman that has brown wrappings, it was because I forgot to add some more water. My brothers/cousins duty is to make sure the fire is constantly burning--which they are very good at. The Filipino measures of a good suman are: 1. It has to be really sticky(this depends on the type of rice you used) 2. The wrap should be really tight 3. When cooked, the wrappings should be mestiza--not brown(my other grandmother in Mogpog will say: the color of the suman wrap when cooked should be the same as your skin color--and I was like: mestisahin daw ako, day!) When the suman is cooked, it is usually partnered and served with homemade kalamayhati(coconut jam). When I was little, I bring suman to my godparents as gifts to them. Additional info: 1. You cant eat the suman while its hot because it will give you an achy tummy aside from its not good to the teeth--hyphotesis remains to be proven 2. When I was little, I remember asking my grandmother why we always have suman for Christmas(I am not much a fan of suman then) and she said its because suman represents Jesus wrapped in lampin(baby wrap). I said: Why do we eat Jesus? And she just told: Ay ikaw isimoy gulping kulit. Wish you were here. Merry Christmas! :* Its cooking time! :D
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 00:32:33 +0000
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