If the Philippines was a person, Marinduque—with its left-of-center
geographical location and rounded shape—would be its heart. Two hours
away from the Luzon mainland via RORO, the island province is most known
for the Moriones Festival, a colorful celebration of Holy Week in which
townspeople don rainbow-colored centurion costumes.
But even
after Holy Week, there’s still much to see in Marinduque. As Drew
Arellano and the ‘Biyahe ni Drew’ crew found out on a recent visit
there, the food is worth a visit as well.
Bibingka
Ask
any of the vendors in the Boac public market why their heavy snack is
called ‘bibingkang lalaki’ (male bibingka), and they’ll giggle before
telling you: “May itlog kasi, eh.”
Coconuts and their by-products
are a main source of income in Marinduque. This carries over to the
food. Bibingkang lalaki is made with tuba (coconut wine) instead of
yeast, which keeps the inside of the bibingka moist and pudding-like.
Other
kinds of bibingka found in Marinduque include bibingkang kanin, made
with whole grains of rice, and the bibingkang pinahiran of Sta. Cruz
municipality, on top of which vendors spread a thick, sweet syrup.
Tuba
In
Marinduque, as in many rural parts of the Philippines, tuba harvesters
climb coconut trees, cut into the flower and leave a funnel and plastic
bottle to collect the dripping sap. Each morning, they harvest the
bottle full of a sweet, milky liquid known as tuba.
You can drink tuba, the locals told us, at any time of the day.
Tuba starts fermenting when you harvest it; as such, the alcohol content starts out very low and gets higher as the day goes on.
At
10:00 AM, Marinduqueños have the sweet, barely-alcoholic drink as a
pick-me-upper before work. (This writer got to try freshly harvested
tuba; I’d say it tasted like a mix of Yakult and vinegar.)
At 3:00 PM, the drink has enough kick to help farmers unwind from the stress of working the fields.
By 6:00 PM, the tuba becomes pungent and highly alcoholic. “Iniinom ‘yun para makatulog,” a tuba harvester joked.
Homestyle fast food
Fed
up with the usual fast food? Good news—neither McDonald’s nor Jollibee
have a single branch in Marinduque! Instead, the only franchised
restaurant is the locally owned GoodChow Food Express.
GoodChow
has diner fare like hamburgers, pizza and fried chicken, as well as
Filipino comfort food such as mami. Because of their low prices—P95 for a
one-third-pound cheeseburger—and unique items like malunggay soup and
piniritong saging (no sugar coating, just a quick roll in rice flour),
they’re a favorite among locals for quick snacks and catered events
There doesn’t seem to be a theme to the menu other than “yummy comfort food,” but nobody’s complaining!
Arrowroot cookies
Arrowroot
cookies are the most popular pasalubong from Marinduque, and are made
from the root crop that grows all over the island. In other parts of the
Philippines, these cookies are known as ‘uraro.’ However, Marinduqueños
use the name ‘arrowroot,’ which they pronounce briskly, the syllables
mashing together: “Arurut!”
For a time, arrowroot flour was hard
to come by. The traditional method of processing the root into flour,
which involved crushing the root using a large rolling pin, was
time-consuming and made the flour very expensive. With the help of the
Department of Science and Technology, though, local Mita Rejano Reyes
opened up the first modern arrowroot processing plant in Marinduque.
Rejano’s
Bakery, which first belonged to Mita’s grandfather, sells what some
call the best arrowroot cookies in Marinduque. Their prices range from
P115 to P150 for a 250-gram tin of cookies, depending on packaging and
the design of the cookies.
The basic cookie is a shaped like a
rounded heart, but some tourists recommend their export-quality ones,
which come in a clear glass bottle and have stiff, meringue-like ridges.
The
flavor of Marinduque’s arrowroot cookies will be familiar to anyone
who’s tried uraro in the past—mildly sweet with a touch of vanilla—but
the stiff ridges add a nice crunch to contrast to the flaky center.
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