There was a time when unas stands in town, particularly at the foot of Calvo Bridge, made brisk sales of sugarcane. Patrons would pangos or us-os the unas, i.e., bite on the skinned sugarcane, chew on the pulp with gusto, slurp the juice, then spit out the pulp on the ground. Sold there was the badila variety of sugarcane, a thick, deep violet variety with thin skin and the best 'eating quality.'
Inside the public market, it was common to find sugarcane products.
Politipot is the thick unadulterated form of molasses sold as liquid candy and a hit among the children but a nightmare to dentists. No lime is used in making politipot, so it turns into a bottle-like consistency when it turns cold.
The most common is the sinakob or disc-shaped solidified molasses, which is made using dena (apog, lime) water and comes in small and large sizes. Halved coconut shells are used in making sinakob, thus the shape. Dameg is large sinakob that was nanlaktipan or formed into a pair of discs, forming an ovoid shape. Bagas is the liquid form of sinakob, and it is the form used in making horse feed by combining it with rice bran, grass, and fodder. The dena is responsible for making it bagas or course in texture, compared to politipot.
As candy, sinakob is cut into bite-size pieces. Some ate it with hot, steaming rice 'in case of emergency.' Sinakob is also advised as folk medicine for when someone is recovering from hepatitis.
Not all local sugar come from sugarcane. Pakasyat is a dark coin-shaped candy with a bitter edge; it is made from sinamit or the sap of silag (buri). It is also sometimes eaten melting on top of steaming rice. Sinamit per se is drunk like juice. Pakasyat appears to be unique to Pangasinan.
Tuba from coconut flower sap is also drunk as juice.
Uses of sinakob in making kanen (kakanin or rice cake) and other delicacies
Sinakob is used as sweetener in a lot of kanen or kakanin (rice cakes), like latik. When coco cream is cooked with sinakob, katiba is produced, the one called coco jam in English or matamis na bao in Tagalog. (A coconut jam with pili nuts in Bicol is called santan.)
Up until the 1950s-'60s, if katiba or coco jam was cooked until almost solid, it became coconut candy, which was wrapped in rolled coupon bond. Old-timers say it was their version of chocolate, 'coconut chocolate'.
Ginuyor is "a variety of coconut candy that is yellowish in color because it has butter, is much longer and bigger than the ordinary coconut candy, also wrapped in coupon bond paper but twisted like a rope and the outer part is flaky. One had to pull one end from the other to get a piece -- thus 'ginuyor' or 'pulled.'"
New kinds of sugar
Traditionally, granulated sugar is called masamit in general. With the advent of refined sugar, it came to be called repinado or amputin asukal. Eventually, there was brown sugar which is called ambalangan asukal (or red sugar).
Today, new kinds of sugar have arrived in the market: muscovado ("partly unrefined sugar with strong molasses content"), washed (the state between reddish brown sugar and white sugar), and coconut sugar or sugar made out of coconut, which is marketed to have a lower glycemic index and thus a healthier alternative to sugar from sugarcane. In bakeshops, there is, of course, the demand for confectioner's sugar with which to dust pastries.
Other parts of the country unsurprisingly have equivalent terms for the above words. In Ilocos, for example, tagapulot is used to refer to molasses, while palinang is used to mean candied tagapulot. Balikutsa or balicutsa refers to shaved bits of palinang, or alternately, meringue-like candy made from the foamy light-colored part that forms on top during the cooking of molasses.
Panutsa or panocha (from the Mexican Spanish) is the preferred term for molasses in the Tagalog regions. However, just like sinakob, it is also used to refer to a peanut brittle candy, which is basically peanuts dipped in molasses and formed into a large, round, flat, softly brittle candy.
One synonym of panutsa is kariba, but it is also used to mean melted muscovado sugar.
Pakaskas is a raw "buri palm sugar mold."
Pulot, pulut-tubo, inuyat, and ginaok are other terms used to refer to "molasses, jaggery, or other thick syrups" from sugarcane, sugar palm (kaong) or buri sap. Pulot in Tagalog also means honey (extracted from bee honeycombs).
Like ginuyor, butong-butong is "an Ilonggo brownish candy made from calamansi-flavored sugarcane molasses, formed by pulling hard the molasses before it hardens and then sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds." The name was formed from the Hiligaynon word for pull (butong), and the candy is "soft, chewy, and elastic" unlike the highly breakable and white sugar-based and food coloring-tinged, sari-sari store-bought tira-tira candy of Luzon.
With these native natural sweeteners, life is made literally masamit -- not just sweet, but in a sensory way, also worth living.
References: Rosabella A. Mendez, Perfecto Beltran, Dr. Leticia Ursua (PSU); Oscar Ora; John Quinto; Melchor Orpilla
Politipot is the thick unadulterated form of molasses sold as liquid candy and a hit among the children but a nightmare to dentists. No lime is used in making politipot, so it turns into a bottle-like consistency when it turns cold.
The most common is the sinakob or disc-shaped solidified molasses, which is made using dena (apog, lime) water and comes in small and large sizes. Halved coconut shells are used in making sinakob, thus the shape. Dameg is large sinakob that was nanlaktipan or formed into a pair of discs, forming an ovoid shape. Bagas is the liquid form of sinakob, and it is the form used in making horse feed by combining it with rice bran, grass, and fodder. The dena is responsible for making it bagas or course in texture, compared to politipot.
As candy, sinakob is cut into bite-size pieces. Some ate it with hot, steaming rice 'in case of emergency.' Sinakob is also advised as folk medicine for when someone is recovering from hepatitis.
Not all local sugar come from sugarcane. Pakasyat is a dark coin-shaped candy with a bitter edge; it is made from sinamit or the sap of silag (buri). It is also sometimes eaten melting on top of steaming rice. Sinamit per se is drunk like juice. Pakasyat appears to be unique to Pangasinan.
Tuba from coconut flower sap is also drunk as juice.
Uses of sinakob in making kanen (kakanin or rice cake) and other delicacies
Sinakob is used as sweetener in a lot of kanen or kakanin (rice cakes), like latik. When coco cream is cooked with sinakob, katiba is produced, the one called coco jam in English or matamis na bao in Tagalog. (A coconut jam with pili nuts in Bicol is called santan.)
Up until the 1950s-'60s, if katiba or coco jam was cooked until almost solid, it became coconut candy, which was wrapped in rolled coupon bond. Old-timers say it was their version of chocolate, 'coconut chocolate'.
Ginuyor is "a variety of coconut candy that is yellowish in color because it has butter, is much longer and bigger than the ordinary coconut candy, also wrapped in coupon bond paper but twisted like a rope and the outer part is flaky. One had to pull one end from the other to get a piece -- thus 'ginuyor' or 'pulled.'"
New kinds of sugar
Traditionally, granulated sugar is called masamit in general. With the advent of refined sugar, it came to be called repinado or amputin asukal. Eventually, there was brown sugar which is called ambalangan asukal (or red sugar).
Today, new kinds of sugar have arrived in the market: muscovado ("partly unrefined sugar with strong molasses content"), washed (the state between reddish brown sugar and white sugar), and coconut sugar or sugar made out of coconut, which is marketed to have a lower glycemic index and thus a healthier alternative to sugar from sugarcane. In bakeshops, there is, of course, the demand for confectioner's sugar with which to dust pastries.
Other parts of the country unsurprisingly have equivalent terms for the above words. In Ilocos, for example, tagapulot is used to refer to molasses, while palinang is used to mean candied tagapulot. Balikutsa or balicutsa refers to shaved bits of palinang, or alternately, meringue-like candy made from the foamy light-colored part that forms on top during the cooking of molasses.
Panutsa or panocha (from the Mexican Spanish) is the preferred term for molasses in the Tagalog regions. However, just like sinakob, it is also used to refer to a peanut brittle candy, which is basically peanuts dipped in molasses and formed into a large, round, flat, softly brittle candy.
One synonym of panutsa is kariba, but it is also used to mean melted muscovado sugar.
Pakaskas is a raw "buri palm sugar mold."
Pulot, pulut-tubo, inuyat, and ginaok are other terms used to refer to "molasses, jaggery, or other thick syrups" from sugarcane, sugar palm (kaong) or buri sap. Pulot in Tagalog also means honey (extracted from bee honeycombs).
Like ginuyor, butong-butong is "an Ilonggo brownish candy made from calamansi-flavored sugarcane molasses, formed by pulling hard the molasses before it hardens and then sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds." The name was formed from the Hiligaynon word for pull (butong), and the candy is "soft, chewy, and elastic" unlike the highly breakable and white sugar-based and food coloring-tinged, sari-sari store-bought tira-tira candy of Luzon.
With these native natural sweeteners, life is made literally masamit -- not just sweet, but in a sensory way, also worth living.
References: Rosabella A. Mendez, Perfecto Beltran, Dr. Leticia Ursua (PSU); Oscar Ora; John Quinto; Melchor Orpilla
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