Life Here & There 
2 Comments Suman Surprise
I felt the need to share with you all the latest adventure in my cooking. We planned on cooking some Filipino food for my hubby’s parents. So I pulled up the recipe for Suman or Ibos (bisaya pa), got the ingredients from the Pinas store, as there isn’t one where they live, and packed up ready to go.
The planning went well but the execution left something to be desired. First lesson to be learned is do not expect your Amerikano hubby to know the differences in rice and what to pack. Second lesson learned is pack the food yourself or put it in a pile where he will not miss it.
As a refresher, Suman calls for sticky or sweet rice, coconut milk, sugar, banana or coconut leaves, fresh ginger or anise extract and patience. Well, we brought the banana leaves but I forgot to buy the fresh ginger. I had purchased the coconut milk and the sweet rice but we forgot them at home. My mother-in-law had the sugar and anise extract. Except the anise extract was all dried up and useless. I think the bottle may have been older than I was lol!
When I discovered most of the ingredients were not with us, my mother-in-law and I went to the store to get the things we needed. Mental note, ‘sticky’ rice meant to be used in sushi is not the same as our sweet or sticky rice (I thought it was the same but I was wrong). The sushi rice wasn’t sticky at all. Again, we forgot the fresh ginger and anise extract. At least I didn’t make a wrong turn on the banana leaves.
Well, we also found out we couldn’t find the coconut milk in the store and had to rely on one can of lite coconut milk that was in the back of her cupboard for maybe a decade. This suman was going to be interesting.
So Goryo and I went about cooking the non-sticky sticky sushi rice mixed with the lite coconut milk and ground powder ginger (just not the same). We rolled it up and gently placed them in the pan to boil in the coconut milk as the recipe says. But we didn’t read far enough when we boiled the rice and we had used up all of the coconut milk. So we turned to use some condensed milk but it was brown so this was getting fun.
Long story short – I forgot a lot of the ingredients, improvised on many more, kinda followed the directions and my suman turned out – just fine. Whoohooo! Kalami sa feeling, naka tsamba hehe! I got one right!
Thank you,
Hidlaw man ko suman ga ba! Ambot ah, anyway it’s getting closer to my Pinas vacation, maka-on gid ko damu nga ibos! Mayo lang da kaw ah!
Ay ga, oo man gani perti gid haha. Sa sabado try ko himo suman. This time malagkit na rice na gid halin sa pinas hehe. Lapit na departure mo, have fun and keep me posted ha. Take care xoxo!