Pagey, Ilik, Belas, Niluto: Our Many Words for Rice

Pagey, ilik, belas, niluto, etc.: Our many words for rice

With Pangasinan being part of the vast Central Luzon plain often dubbed as the country's "rice granary," locals have evolved an entire vocabulary revolving around rice, its byproducts, and things associated with it, and the terms mostly have no English equivalents.

Pagey or paguey (palay in Tagalog) is the term used to refer to the whole rice plant. Rice seedlings that are ready for re-planting are called pasedser. 

 

When it comes to the rice grain itself, it gets complicated. Unhusked rice grains are called ilik (palay in Tagalog) once they are harvested, while the milled grains are called belas (bigas). A bundle of rice grain stalks is called pingey.

In homes, belas is stored in the rice dispenser or belasan, where the small measuring cup called tagayan is found. According to local belief, the tagayan must not be left just anywhere -- it must be returned right away to its place, while the belasan must never be left empty, or else the tagayan and belasan will always be empty. This certain reverence is reserved for belas elsewhere. Every New Year, it is believed that the belasan should be filled with rice, and the same is true for when one steps into one's new house for the first time. Belas is also thrown at a newly married couple as they approach the church door on their way out after the wedding ceremony, and inside the new house as part of the good luck pot (which also contains coins) used for house blessings.

The ilik are stored in a huge box called garong which is made of woven bamboo slats. A garong may be found inside a roofed hut-like structure called kamalir (kamalig or storehouse).

Traditionally, the ilik is pounded using the wooden alo or pestle and lasong or mortar (bayuhan) or taltagan (giant mortar), and then the chaff or taep (ipa) are removed from the grains using the bigao (bilao) or bamboo winnowing tray. Before cooking, the cleaned rice grains are often cleaned further for the few remaining unhusked grains and other impurities called keta.

When the rice mill arrived using modern machines, it was called kiskisan or pakiskisan.

Once the milled rice is cooked in water, it is now called niluto (kanin or sinaing, newly cooked rice) or baao, baaw. (Others say baao is used only for when the niluto gets cold.) The act of measuring the amount of water used to cook rice in the pot using one's fingers or hand is called dangka. The toasted bottom part of the baaw is called galor or garol (tutong). Leftover rice is called betel a baaw or ambetel a baaw, literally meaning cold rice (bahaw or kanin lamig), and is the one used to cook insanglil (sinangag) or fried rice. Cooking fried rice using newly cooked rice gives a different result that is not favored by Filipinos because the fried rice will not be as fluffy (buhaghag) in texture.

At the dining table, when the diner eats sloppily and pieces of baaw fall off the plate and onto the table or the floor, the wayward rice pieces are referred to as mikmik, as are other food bits that go with these. Treating rice like this is often reproved, as the natives know how much is involved in producing each tiny bit.

The thick boiling broth of the rice being cooked is spooned out and fed to babies as vitamin B supplement to prevent beri-beri, and the broth is called sitsit (am), and it is often sweetened with sugar.

Certain blunders in cooking rice also have assigned terms. When the baaw is under-cooked as a result of inadequate fire using firewood or inadequate water, it is described as abelbel or naetan baaw. For the under-cooked rice to be thoroughly cooked, one has to liwliw (in-in) it, or give it more time under the fire until one smells the distinct cooked rice aroma. When it is overcooked because of too much water, the baaw becomes inmaltey (liver-like) or like kutsinta in consistency, what Tagalogs call malata, or if really soupy, like binolbol (lugaw or rice gruel). The cook for the day remedied these blunders by placing some salt on top of the cover of the cooking pot (usually a cast iron kaldero), and waiting until the rice is done, or the undercooked or overcooked rice is mixed using a ladle and cooked again on low fire.

Baaw that got accidentally toasted at the bottom is described to be ginmalor.

Before serving rice on the table, the person tasked to scoop out the steaming hot rice from the kaldero or pot for the first time writes a cross on top of the rice using a special flat bamboo ladle called aklo (as opposed to the balaok). This is a form of benediction or prayer of thanksgiving.

Rice that is maalsa, or absorbs more water and rises more considerably when cooked, is described as malebag.

But there is a close-sounding term used for ground (giniling) non-glutinous rice that is used to cook a local version of puto called puton belas (non-glutinous rice puto) or puto lasong (puto cooked in a clay pan called lasong): malbag. Glutinous rice is called ansakket, while a variety of reddish-purplish glutinous rice is called batolinao.

A consistency of cooked rice that is highly valued is being makulaney or limber, making baao easy to chew on. Makulnet is used to describe the pleasantly sticky quality of ansakket/glutinous rice.

Broken rice grains traditionally removed using a particular bigao with holes called yakayakan are called umek (or emek, pegpeg) and then fed to the chickens or cooked as part of feeds for the swine.

Milled rice kept in storage for so long is described as umbak. It is characterized by undesirable qualities: malebag, no longer fragrant like the newly milled one, and often infested by weevils.

The rice hull is often used as cooking fuel or spread on ice blocks to delay melting, while the rice bran byproduct of milling is called babang (darak), which is also fed to the pigs. The rest of the discarded remains of the rice plant after harvest is called dayami (the equivalent of hay in English) and is often stored in a lusbua'y pagey or mandala (haystack).

In the public market, not all the rice sold are equal, as there are mind-boggling varieties with specific names and codes, such as Wagwag, Dinorado, Sinandomeng, and Milagrosa, and the varying prices bear this out. The Maharlika or Corazon variety is specifically sought out for making the deservedly popular Calasiao version of puto. The indigenous varieties being grown in Bayambang reportedly include the Mugen, Milbuen, and Sinamon.

Apart from rice being a staple, Pangasinenses, just like Ilocanos and Tagalogs, have come to associate it as well with dessert, because anything sweet and starchy is called kanen (kankanen, kakanin) even if it is technically not a rice cake. The general term for sweets is palamis, while an even more general term is used for snacks: mirindal.

There's the charcoal-blackened or toasted young glutinous rice called deremen, which is used to prepare the black kanen called inlubi on All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. There's also rice that is formed into pinipig (toasted and then pounded immature rice), and fermented sweetened non-glutinous rice (or red rice) called binuburan, which literally means "fermented using bubor," or fermenting agent. Toasted glutinous rice crispies fashioned into bricks are called gipang, while puffed rice rolled in molten red sugar is called ampaw or pop rice. Other kanen that look like plain rice are inangit, inkiwal, inkaldit (or patupat), latik, and suman. (Inkaldit resembles the Cebuano puso or rice steamed in woven coconut leaf purse.)

Tapong (galapong in Tagalog) is used to refer to giniling a ansakket or ground glutinous rice that is turned into rice dough. A kanen that is made of tapong is often cooked bibingka style, or cooked with burning charcoals on top and at the bottom, thus the delicacy called bibingkan tapong.

The list of kanen made mostly of ground glutinous rice is long: bicho-bicho (carioca in Tagalog), unday-unday (palitaw), kulambo, tikoy, tambo-tambong, etc.

Rice is also used as a filler in fish buro together with labong or bamboo shoots. Arroz caldo (literally, 'chicken rice' from the Spanish) is a favorite congee-type of snack especially during the rainy season. Long-time residents attest to locals cooking arroz valenciana as well.

Rice is also toasted until burnt and made into rice coffee.

A relatively novel product in Brgy. Sancagulis is the rice cracker, our answer to the Japanese senbei. The dictionary of Howard P. McKaughan of the Pacific and Asian Linguistics Institute (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1971) has additional terms and definitions that have become mostly obscure, if not obsolete, with disuse.

Belyér or bellér means soft (as e.g. the quality of cooked rice). Bonál is to transplant rice seedlings, or plow or cultivate the field for transplanting rice seedlings. Dawá is rice grain (in relation to the remainder of rice plant). Ebés is to be behind time or too late, or when referring to rice, maturing too late, therefore with little harvestable grain. Pásol means field or uneven ground. Kapásolán (pásol) is rice fields. Liglíg means to grind a small quantity of rice, e.g., just sufficient for the day’s supply. Lúba means to grind rice for a second time (it also means allowance in size or hem of clothes made for a growing child). Nasnás are grains of rice which have become separated from the husk. Ombés is a late maturing variety of rice; it also means to be late. País refers to fish wrapped in banana leaf and cooked in a kind of rice cake. Páti, when used to refer to rice being cooked, means to boil over (manpáti). Páwpaw is the uppermost portion of cooked rice. Poñgó is another term for a bundle of rice stalks. Súlsul is the first stage of husking rice.

A bird that frequently pecked at the rice grains was called anoyao.

The changes in the lexicon through time are reflective of the changes in the local society's adoption of technology, culture, and lifestyle in general.

Judging by how much rice is deeply embedded in our DNA, the idiomatic expression 'bread and butter' does not strike a chord with locals as much as rice does. In these parts, rice remains essentially our 'bread of life.'

It is no surprising, then, when expressions related to rice have become part of local idiomatic expressions. If Tagalogs have "Marami ka pang kakaining bigas" (You still have a lot of rice to eat) and "Ako ang nagsaing, iba ang kumain" (I was the one who cooked rice, but other people ate it), Pangasinenses have equivalent expressions.

"Baaw" per se is used in different ways. "Ginawam ya baaw" or "binaaw" ("you turned it into rice") means "pinapak ang ulam or pulutan," treating a dish as though it was rice. (The dish was eaten on its own, like any staple carbs.)

"Agmo babaawen" (huwag mong itratong parang kanin; don't treat it like rice) is an expression that means "huwag seryosohin" or "do not take it seriously."

"Makapatabang na baaw" ("makes cooked rice taste bland") means "makapadimla" or loathsome, disgusting.

"Aliwan kanayon ed baaw" means "not a relative based on rice," indicating that the relative being referred to is "angapo'y arom" or "walang iba sa amin" or "malapit na kamag-anak," a close family relation.

"Umbarong ed baaw" ("magtampo sa kanin" or "sulking over rice") is a street lingo that means someone is no longer afraid to die or no longer has the desire to live. Example of usage is "Bugbugin kita eh hanggang sa magtampo ka na sa kanin (o hindi ka na makakain ng kanin)." "Labay mo amo'n umbarong ed baaw?" means "Gusto mo na atang mamatay, p're?" (You want to die now, as in you no longer wish to eat rice?). 

"Apigar so kaldero" literally means "the rice kettle tumbled over," but it actually means "anggapo’y baaw ta naupot" (naubos ang kanin; the steamed rice was all eaten up), an indication that the meal was so delicious. A similar expression is "aputer so aklo" ("naputol ang sandok" or "the flat wooden ladle for rice got broken"), which means "naupot so inluton niluto" (naubos ang sinaing na kanin) or "the cooked rice all got eaten up," indicating the same (the diners have just relished a most delicious repast, that is why).

Informants:

Dr. Leticia B. Ursua: niluto, malbag, kutsinta, deremen, buro, arroz caldo, arroz valenciana Dr. Nicolas O. Miguel, Fr. Carmelo Carreon: lusbua'y pagey, mandala Jeric Manuel, Bayambang Culture Mapping Project, citing Tanolong Brgy. Captain Gloria Solomon and farmer Vicento Suria: Mugen, Milbuen, and Sinamon. Lily Luz U. Abella: inmaltey Clarita F. Tagab: abelbel and remedies

Joseph Anthony Quinto, Melchor Orpilla: distinction between niluto and baaw

References:

http://bucaio.blogspot.com/2013/05/binuburan.html https://www.facebook.com/.../binuburan.../10154004699313602/ - "The bubur is made by mixing ground rice and pounded ginger with a small amount of a pre-made culture - the previous bubur - then fermented, molded, then dried under the sun." https://www.hawaiiopen.org/.../files/9780824879082.pdf