How to Make Ginataang Langka na May Kalabasa (Coconut Milk Stewed Green Jackfruit with Butternut Squash)

While waiting for the next patient to arrive needing my services, I turn again to the computer keyboard to yet write another blogpost. Once again, turning to my father's Bicolano roots, I write something with coconut milk but what makes this dish a bit more interesting is its use of raw fruits as basis as vegetable.  What do I mean? 

 

In Asian countries, it seems common that fruits are usually ripe when eaten, however, when green, it becomes a compliment to main dishes or sometimes, even treated as a vegetable.  Bananas, for example, with its fragrant pulp is a fruit when ripe; but it is a starch vegetable when raw.  This is the basis why ripe bananas make good smoothies, banana cues, toddler  mashed food and even banana cakes and breads.  But green, they are can be boiled and mashed and serve as the starch of some savory dish.  Green bananas also is the basis of banana chips because of its high starch content - much like potato or cassava chips or any other root crop based chip.  (Terra chips is an example.) 

 

The fruit that I am going to discuss here with similar qualities is jackfruit.  Jackfruit (a.k.a. "Langka" in Tagalog) when ripe can be eaten fresh but can also be cooked in syrup or coconut milk favored with other spice essences like anise.  It is great on that milky concoction called Halo-Halo (Literally translated as "Mix-Mix" pertaining to the mix of sweetened things like mung and azuki beans and purple yam (ube) with gelatin, leche flan, sweetened langka, sweetened mutant coconut (i.e. macapuno) all in shaved ice with evaporated or condensed milk and even topped with ice cream and pinipig (crunchy rice krispies).  Now, Halo-Halo is another concoction worthy of great discussion because its individual components are unusual to the western palate and likewise the concoction itself is somewhat related to the shaved ice desserts of Asian countries especially Thailand, but I reserve this for another blog post.  Going back to the Jackfruit, the fruit is treated as a vegetable when raw.  Now, I do not think there is another region in the Philippines that uses the Jackfruit as vegetable except the Bicol region where my Father came from and grew up.  What is interesting is when one guesses which country has this culinary tendency, judging from the raw products it exports...the answer - Thailand, which incidentally is home to coconut milk based foods AND desserts! 

Ginataang Langka: coconut cream stewed

green unripe jackfruit.

 

This lady is standing in front of a tree bearing

large and usually ripe jackfruits.

This is ripe jackfruit.  Notice that between the fiber

separators is the meaty casings of the seeds.

The meaty part is what's edible in ripe

jackfruit.

This is the pulp of unripe green jackfruit. Notice the

immatureseeds. We use everything as vegetable.

This is sweetened jackfruit in heavy syrup.

Sweetened jackfruit is one of the components that
make this halo-halo dessert. Notice the
beans, palm fruit (kaong), leche flan
and ube (purple yam) ice cream to boot!

Coming from this observation, I said that there has got to be something Thai in the Bicolano soul.  Looking at various blogposts - using the internet to gather some useful and valid information; rather than finding out what's going on in the latest series of installments regarding Justin Bieber's breakdown - I found out that there is such a connection.  I found this entry from a webpage entitled, "Siamese Traders Introduced Thai Cooking and the Muaythai Boxing to the Philippine Region of Bicol". (http://www.mabuhayradio.com/noy-bicol-column/siamese-traders-introduced-thai-cooking-and-the-muaythai-boxing-to-the-philippine-region-of-bicol) 

 

The famed perfect cone volcano Mayon

in Legazpi, Albay.

Coconut trees are just everywhere!

This is copra - pieces of dried coconut meat

that is exported as raw material for the

basis of coconut oils.

"Basil Rossi, an Australian of Italian ancestry and who has a Bicolano wife from Naga City (in Camarines Sur), provided the answer. Rossi, who was a former museum curator in Singapore, said that Siamese (Thai) recipes, which were introduced by early traders from Thailand, heavily influenced the Bicol foods. He said the Bicol Region has many archaeological sites that yielded Siamese pottery pieces. He said also that some Bicol recipes were exactly the same, peppers for pepper, ingredients for ingredient, as those found in some Thai cities that he had visited. He said that he would discuss fully his findings with, and provide, me with the recipes if I visited with him in the Bicol Region or if he traveled to Los Angeles. (Editor's Note: Mr. Rossi died a year after his online dialogue with Bobby Reyes. Reyes unfortunately never met in person Mr. Rossi.) 

  

After Mr. Rossi died, I started a quest to find historical data to prove his assertion. Historian E. P. Patanne in his book, "The Philippines in the 6th to 16th Centuries," reported that a Robert Fox-led Philippine National Museum team found in 1959 in Calatagan, Batangas, pre-Spanish burial sites with more than 500 graves. The archaeological dig yielded some 1,135 pieces of trade pottery of Chinese, Annamese and Siamese make going back to the late 14th and early 16th centuries. The burial sites yielded beads, bracelets, gold objects and earthenware. A Prof. Olov A. T. Janse made the first systematic excavation in Calatagan in 1940. What Professor Janse found what that the Calatagan excavations revealed extensive Philippine trades with China, Annam and Siam in ceramics during the 5th century. It was logical to assume, in the absence of primary historical data, that these traders from China, Annam (now Vietnam) and Siam (now Thailand) traded with other areas of the Philippines, especially on the Island of Luzon, where Batangas is found. Batangas lies north of the Bicol Region, about 600 kilometers from the southern tip of Luzon, Sorsogon Province (the southern end of the Bicol Region). Batangas is also less than 400 kilometers from Camarines Norte Province, the northern-most province in the Bicol Region. 

  

Fox, together with Filipino archaeologist Alfredo Evangelista, undertook in 1956 an excavation in the Bato Cave of Bacon district of Sorsogon City. The artifacts Fox and Evangelista found consisted of burial jars and stone tools, which were carbon dated at 2,280 years old, plus or minus 250 years. 

  

In his book Patanne mentioned: "Another jar burial site was excavated in Sorsogon, where no Chinese trade wares were found but recovered were multicolored flat, round and spherical opaque glass beads." Patanne also wrote in the same page that: "The Aguit-it site in Camarines Norte containing jar burials have been excavated from 1982 to 1983. Recovered were over 200 earthenware jars and pots, bowls and plates, iron implements, glass beads and stone anvils." I said to Copper that Patanne's phrase, "No Chinese trade wares were found," implied that the artifacts recovered in Sorsogon were from Siam and/or Annam. "

An example of ancient Thai pottery.

 

 

Now, isn't that interesting?  So, which then explains what I found in the Asian store makes sense - a can of raw green jackfruit (not sweetened, not yellow) in brine.  This ingredient is the basis of the next vegetable dish I am introducing for my Father introduced it us kids in the seventies when he sliced some green jackfruit and asked my Mother to cook it in pork and shrimps with loads of coconut milk, ginger, garlic, chilies and another different ingredient - balaw. 

 

Balaw is essentially small shrimp that has been mashed, dehydrated, patted into cakes and left under the sun to dry to ferment further and thus resulting in a pungent, fishy, briny solid paste that stinks to high heaven but essentially delightful when added in coconut milk seafood based or flavored dishes.  Has anyone reopened a bottle of patis (fish sauce) that has been kept in the kitchen pantry for months between intermittent uses?  The concentration of the fish extract with the crystallization of the supersaturated solution of salt leads to very much the same thing.  It stinks to high heaven but just lovely when mixed with savory Asian dishes.  The closest among the varieties of shrimp pastes that resemble balaw is the Malay belacan but in the wiki description, in belacan "...the krill would be steamed first and after that are mashed into a paste and stored for several months. The fermented shrimp are then prepared, fried and hard-pressed into cakes."  I remember when I visited my Father's province years ago, the balaw was just pressed into cakes, left to dry out and ferment in the sun without frying.  But whether belacan or balaw, I find the aroma is quite the same. 

Balaw in the Bicol region looks like a

flat rounded block like this.

But this is the color. Both pictures here are

belacan.

 

I notice there is no other Asian originated label for this fermented shrimp cake that resembles balaw.  And balaw was not mentioned in the Wikipedia entry.  However, the article did mention a Portuguese and Indian meat dish which is based on vinegar mixed with shrimp paste called Balchao; now, was this the origin of the word balaw?  And guess who brought it to Indian cuisine - this meat dish that contains shrimp paste?  I thought it would be the way from the east; but no, it was from the west!  The Portuguese colonized Macao where this dish originated and then brought it to Portugal and then hence to India.  Unusual but that's how the influence route happened. 

 

I didn't think that a simple discussion of Coconut Milk with Green Jackfruit and Balaw would become so complicated.  Anyway - I am going to shut up now.  And now, off to our recipe. 

 

Guinataang Langka na may Kalabasa (Coconut Milk Jackfruit with Butternut Squash) 

• 1/2 head garlic, peeled and chopped 
• 1 thumbsized ginger, peeled and chopped 
• 1 small onion, peeled and sliced 
• 1/2 pound (1/4 kilo) chicken meat, sliced into bite sized pieces 
• 1/2 pound (1/4 kilo) pork, sliced into bite sized pieces 
• 1 can green jackfruit in brine, drained and sliced 
• 1 pound butternut squash, peeled, seeded and sliced into 1/2 inch cubes 
• salt and pepper to taste 
• 3-4 red chilies (Thai would do but preferably the Labuyo which is hotter) 
• 1 tablespoon (or two) shrimp paste (use equivalent amount of balaw would be more authentic!) 
• 1 package frozen Philippine coconut milk, thawed (1 can of Thai coconut milk will also do but does not yield as much coconut oils like the Philippine variety) 

The small but terrible Labuyo chili.

 

Notice how the Labuyo resembles the Thai
Red Chili in form, but not as hot through the
quality of hotness is somewhat similar.

Procedure 

1. In a hot wok, heat about an eighth cup of cooking oil and saute the garlic, ginger and onions till barely transparent.  Add the meats and saute further. 
2. Once the meats are half cooked, add the coconut milk, balaw, salt and pepper to taste.  Lower the heat and cover to boil. 
3. When boiling, add the vegetables (preferably squash first to half cook then add jackfruit later) and cover to simmer further.  Lower the heat to prevent burning the bottom as coconut milk thickens to a sauce.  This is where the variations come in: one may choose to simmer until the sauce is thick to desired consistency; others prefer a drier sauce where the coconut milk solids begin to gel and the coconut oils are beginning to appear.  This is known as "latik" which is very tasty and imparts a concentrated coconut flavor; however, be careful not to overdo it as latik burns easily and usually brown caramelized latik destroys the flavor of a savory dish.  Brown latik is best used as toppings for glutinous rice based desserts like "suman" or "bibingka".