Gipang: Bricks you can eat

What is dark, crunchy, and sweet, and no other town makes it? Clue: It is sometimes mistaken for pinipig or pop rice but it is neither of the two, for it has its own identity. And because it is unique to Bayambang, it also gets to be associated with it.

The answer, of course, is gipang. Every Bayambangueño is most likely familiar with it as that delicacy that comes in brick shape and sold in separate plastic bags in the market. But very few know where exactly it is made and how it is made.

Because he is from that place, former teacher and now Municipal Senior Tourism Officer Rafael Saygo tipped us off for the answer: gipang is being made in Brgy. Amanperez and it is where it was invented.

According to the residents there, they have been making gipang since they were young, and that the tradition of making gipang came from their ancestors. According to their own estimate, it started since the 1950s-1960s, when all households produced or cooked gipang.

Saygo led us to the house of Rosita Manlongat de Vera, where we find a makeshift production area.

Gipang, it turns out, is a hybrid of pop rice, rice crispies, pinipig, and deremen. It is essentially made of deremen, i.e., glutinous rice that is toasted at immature stage and blackened with charcoal, giving it a smoky flavor. It is traditionally used on All Saint's Day to make a rice cake called inlubi, which is cooked in honor of the dearly departed. 

Now, to make gipang, the deremen is made into binotang deremen, deremen that is puffed a bit by frying it in oil with molten molasses on an arms-length flatbed steel fryer and, once done, the whole thing is quickly partitioned into blocks and hauled off.  Timing is reportedly important, so as to achieve the desired degree of doneness. The result is a wonderful combination of flavors and consistency: chewy and crunchy at the same time, and smoky and sweet too. Reminiscent of pinipig but not flattened into flakes, this greenish-gray treat is often squashed as topping in halo-halo or eaten as is.

“It’s only here in Bayambang that gipang is made!” Aling Rosita proudly claims. "The ones sold in Guagua, Pampanga? Those  are from Amanperez."