This is the article I wrote many months ago but kept in the file till today, March 19, the birth anniversary of my mother. She is pictured here with her "classmates" in a mothers' class (she is 4th from right, seated on the second row).
One vivid memory I have while studying in Bulan, Sorsogon was the sight of a huge Milo can at the top shelf of Sy Bing Co’s bakery. Yes, the choco powder brand that every Filipino knows. There it is, the green can, seemingly telling me one thing: get me, get me!
Every day as I go and buy pan de sal from Sy Bing Co’s bakery, I always look at that shelf and tell myself that someday I will be able to afford buying that big can of Milo. Never mind if the shelf was dusty and dirty and the Milo itself may have already been close to expiring. To me, it meant the apex of what I considered being rich. I would go back to Ma Feling’s house (where I lived while finishing high school) with a smile on my face thinking of that single goal in my life.
I know it’s funny how a 13 year old kid would obsess on a powdered choco drink. Looking back, it is indeed funny tying wealth with that can. But I think I picked up a few realizations here and there with what I can call my Milo obsession.
After college and having a job now, I was of course able to buy the things I wanted. Well almost.
Also, I realized that in all those years I was looking at that big can of Milo, I had actually been blessed.
My mother, Maria Ginete, was one formidable desserts-and-sweets woman. She could make unique desserts like dulce na silot, dulce na pina, inarnibal na pili, and of course, tablea.
My mother, Maria Ginete, was one formidable desserts-and-sweets woman. She could make unique desserts like dulce na silot, dulce na pina, inarnibal na pili, and of course, tablea.
Dulce na silot is one of a kind. Haven’t seen anything close to it here in Manila or elsewhere. It is young coconut dripping in syrup. My mother carefully grates young coconut meat so that only the pure white strips are included and those that have slightest shard of the coconut shell are discarded. Then she cooks these in a syrup made of white sugar (refinado, she used to say). Predictably as someone from Bicol, she adds bits of boiled pili nuts. To add more zest and a little tart, she sprinkles the silot with rinds of lemoncito, the tiny fruit of a lemon tree that used to grow in our backyard. These red and green rinds make the dessert more attractive. She then serves up this super dessert: glassy strips of young coconut so tender and sweet dripping in syrup and made a bit tart by the lemoncito.
If there is a dulce na silot, there is a dulce na pinya. My mother was known for these staple desserts during fiestas. Every May my aunts would order these from her. Dulce na pinya is, you guessed it right, sweetened pineapple. This is not the Del Monte variety but this is pineapple harvested from the farm in Matanac. Each April, Mamay, Papay and the rest of their young brood would troop to Matanac to harvest pineapple that is not ripe but mature enough to be fleshy.
Mamay would then core the pineapples is and slice them, now according to the Del Monte way: almost perfect circle with a hole in the middle resembling a donut. Then she cooks these in a thick syrup until the sugar seeps into the core of the fibrous fruit. The taste that comes out is sweet and slightly sour, just absolutely the perfect way to end a meal.
Inarnibal na pili is unique to Bicol. If you’re not familiar with the fruit, pili tastes like an almond but not quite. Its tree grows on loamy soil and the pili is actually a nut. The fruit part is the fleshy portion, almost like aubergine in color, which we usually boil and mash with sugar when tender. What comes out is a sweet paste. Another way to eat this boiled fruit is to dip the mashed flesh in soy sauce and it sort of becomes like a salad. The pili nut is cooked in a very thick syrup till it dries. What you’ll get is a sugar coated pili nut.
Now the tablea. We have several cacao trees and when they bear fruit, my mother would make these tablea, balled cacao seeds. First the cacao’s seeds are harvested, dried and roasted. The cacao’s fruit tastes like mangosteen when ripe and so we kids have a good time chewing on the fleshy part of the fruit making sure to leave the cacao seeds for the tablea.
After careful roasting, the cacao seeds are ground. We used to have this gilingan, a manual grinder really that churns out the ground cacao beans. Because of its oil, the ground cacao is shiny.
My mother then mixes the ground cacao with brown sugar and starts to form them into small balls by the sheer movement of her hands. In time, she can make a number of tablea balls and these are then spun around in a woven basket, or nigo, to smoothen the tablea balls.
Since she makes all these tablea balls by hand, she would inevitably have her palm full of the leftover cacao mix. When she’s done, she would ask all her kids to eat the rest of the choco mix from her hand. We had a good time doing this.
Tablea makes a very thick hot chocolate. There is a distinct way of making it, according to my mother. The water and tablea proportion should be just right so that the chocolate drink remains thick. And beware if you think you can drink it right away. Might burn your throat. The right way is to sip it. Best way to savor the flavour.
As I have grown these years, I realized that the big Milo tin can sitting on top of Sy Bing Co’s bakery comes nowhere close to the tablea made by our mother. How she’s made the tablea and the experience of having to partake of leftover cacao mix right on her palm, they were priceless. And I realize this is the wealth that’s been there all along.
