Banana thickets are a common sight in the local landscape, together with bamboo and coconut groves, mango orchards, and rice and corn fields that stretch to as far as the eye can see. What is notable, however, from a cultural standpoint, is the variety of bananas traditionally grown here and consumed in equally varied ways.
Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, but for locals, variety is not mere spice but an essential part of life. And they are accustomed to it, especially with certain fruits and vegetables. Traditionally eaten here are two types of talon or eggplant (the elongated deep purple variety and the the round, light green balbalosa), two kinds of palya or bitter gourd (long, big and small, round and more bitter variety), different types of kamatis or tomatoes (the squash-shaped cuatro cantos and the round and oval ones), at least two types of patola (the ridged and the smooth one), two types of agayep or sitaw (the light green, smooth, and long cultivar and the short, rough tandereg), at least four kinds of guava (small and fragrant, the bigger one but bland, and the giant guapple), at least four types of milon or melon (the oblong, the round cantaloupe, and more recently, the new very sweet cantaloupe and the smooth-skinned casaba type), and various kinds of mango (pico, carabao, Indian, Hawaiian, byuko or supsupin, pao/pahutan or paho, and apple mango).
Variety is most especially high in bananas. A typical grocery shopper in big cities may be familiar with just one variety -- the Cavendish. Not with local consumers, as they are accustomed to the fact that not all bananas are the same. In fact, despite belonging to roughly the same species, the differences between the varieties or cultivars are quite remarkable to the point that preparing one variety for a certain delicacy will just not do for any other.
The most common variety consumed and grown is the aritondal, tondal or latundan, whose flesh is light-colored, fragrant, and sweet. The skin is thin and yellow or rust-speckled yellow in color. Tundal is a table banana, often eaten at the end of a meal as palamis or dessert. As it is rich in pectin, it is often eaten to treat diarrhea, and too much of it can cause constipation.
The second most common variety consumed and grown is the thick-skinned seba or pontin seba (saba or Cardaba), which is used in many dishes and prepared and eaten in many ways: raw, boiled or broiled with the skin on, halved and fried for breakfast, rolled in brown sugar then fried and speared (banana cue), fried in batter (maruya) or corn flour wrap (turon), made into chips and sundried, mixed in stews (lauya), boiled in red sugar syrup and served with ice cubes and tapioca pearls, diced into sweets and mixed with other sweets in halo-halo, etc.
For some reason, certain cooking styles for seba are unheard of in these parts: the binange (peeled and grilled) of Quezon, pinasugbo (cone of candied saba tongues) of Bacolod, ginanggang (grilled, slathered with margarine, and sprinkled with white sugar) of Davao, sinapot (halved then dipped in batter, deep-fried, and skewered) of Camarines Sur, sinalab (overripe saba or latundan mashed into a pancake with flour and buko slices sandwiched between two banana leaves then dry-cooked on a pan) of Marinduque, etc.
Unique to Pangasinan is the use of unripe saba -- a stage called gubal -- in everyday cuisine. Near-ripe seba are boiled, pounded together with boiled cassava and grated coconut, then added with sugar and margarine (or butter) with a pinch of salt to make nilupak. Green seba is grated and turned into soup with malunggay or ampalaya leaves (kinurkor a ponti) or sliced and used in inselar a sira (fish sinigang).
Banana blossoms (puso'y ponti, also often called banana heart) from seba are routinely cooked in coconut milk or adobo style as a kind of vegetable salad. They are also used in inselar ya sira, among other dishes.
Sometimes, saba contains surprisingly large seeds. Other varieties of banana look and taste a lot like saba, like the inabaniko variety, whose sapar or piling (bunch) has a fan-like, closely packed arrangement, as it name indicates. (The entire cluster of banana bunches is called monil, which is bungkos in Tagalog.)
Another common variety both grown and eaten is the ebeb (the one called bungulan in other places), a green-skinned variety that is not as sweet and creamy and more on the sourish side but nonetheless has a distinct flavor and aroma. This one rots so easily, so it is not sold far away from where it is harvested.
Lacatan (or lakatan), the world's creamiest banana variety, is also a popular dessert banana, though not exactly grown locally. It is the variety used in fresh fruit salads with cream. A variety of lacatan is rust-colored, and it is called kalawangin in Tagalog.
Lesser-known varieties appear in the market every now and then whose provenance is not exactly local, and these include the red-skinned morado.
Another variety, less common, is a cross between seba and tundal -- smaller than seba but creamier in taste and has a light orange hue.
The San Juan variety looks like saba, but it is a lot more astringent and sour. (In Cagayan, it is reported, it is called datu and traditionally used to make vinegar.)
In the last few decades, a new variety has made an appearance on locals' dining table: it is called viloria(?). It looks a bit like plump tundal, but different in taste. It is incorrectly called señorita, because it is a lot bigger and less sweeter and lacks the distinct fragrance of the highly perishable señorita of Tagaytay and thereabouts.
A recent introduction is the plantain type of banana, with its acrid aftertaste and pendulous tip.
A little wild green banana is called balayang. It is filled with seeds but the flesh is tastier than the
common tundal.
Banana leaves are often used to line certain rice cakes, like bibingka, latik, and inangit, as it imparts a pleasant aroma and a subtle flavor and to avoid the rice cake from getting burned. Before using, they are first brought over hot coals and wilted, most likely to get rid of any bitter taste or so as not to spoil the food easily. Doing away with the leaves in local kakanin makes these delicacies seem incomplete. However, the leaves of the seba are the ones preferred as wrapper especially in making suman or tupig because these do not impart bitterness to the rice cake.
In the olden times, freshly hacked banana leaves were used to wrap the lunch of students from the barrios and those of farmers going to faraway fields. They were also used to shine wooden floors.
The dried leaves of the banana are called alasas. They are often used to culture oyster mushrooms.
The verb teba means to hack down the whole banana plant when the fruits are alumbas or have ripened.
Unlike Ilonggos and Ivatans, locals do not make use of the banana pith as food ingredient. Instead, the trunk pieces -- called epas -- are cut into rectangular pieces and used as improvised plates during farm lunches.
The epas and pua or sengeg (root) of the banana are respectively scraped (ilap) using the sagad and grated using a gusugos, then boiled and fed to the swine being fattened together with babang (rice bran), pepeg or emek (small broken bits of rice grains), and ngalub (a local pigweed).
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