Foot and Fire

This is such a home dish favorite for Visayans.  Easy to prepare sour fish soup! Peel a layer of banana heart until the tender part remains.  Slice the young portion into serving size (Hint: as big as your slices of milkfish).  Slice milkfish (bangus) into serving sizes and sprinkle with salt. Set aside. In a soup casserole, put water (Hint: 1 slice of fish, 1 cup of water), tomatoes, onions and halved  batuan . Let boil and mash the batuan to bring out the sourness. Add the bangus or milkfish.  Let the fish cook through for 5 to 8 minutes and adjust the taste with salt. Let boil again and add the banana heart.   Let the banana heart cook fro about 2-3 minutes. Serve with rice. *** The white soup can be attributed to the batuan and the banana heart. *** Milk fish and Banana Heart Sour soup. *** A closer look at the white soup, a color attributed to the batuan and banana heart. ***

Verba or chinese batuan as we knew it here is also a childhood fruit. We used to climb two trees of it in Brgy. haguimit where we were used to have a short vacation. It is sour and turns yellow when ripe. It has no much commercial value as the same cannot be used in cooking although it is called batuan... It round and the size of longgan and the seed or two is found inside and as big asthe fruit itself. It can be enjoyed by peeling and squeezing the fruit seed inside one's mouth and letting it stay there for a moment while one is grimacing because of its sourness and then one ejects the seed. If one is lucky, some ripe fruits are sweet with only a bit of sourness.

By GERLIE M. UY Linaga nga Baka with Langka... Weekends are best as we have time to slow-cook like this linaga. Beef soup are best with slow cook so that one can get the real beef stock. It is always a treat! Once in a while, it is great to have meat protein for this vegetable girl. 1 kilo Beef (Cuts with bones) 3 liter water batuan (sour fruit popular in Visayas) 3 thumbs of ginger 1 knot of lemongrass leaves Jalapeno Chili Salt 1 T of Chinese Five Spice (optional) Slices of unripe jackfruit Wash the beef cuts and place in a cauldron with water. Bring to boil until meat is tender. At least 2 hours in charcoal fire. But this must be shorter in pressure cookers. Add crushed batuan, crushed ginger, and lemongrass. Bring to boil until the spices are in the soup. Add salt. Add jalapeno, more salt if needed, Chinese five spice and the unripe jackfruit. Let boil until jackfruit is cooked. Where we cooked it... Whole fresh batuan, crushed. Sliced unripe jackfruit.