It's All About the Grain!
- Lyle
- Feb 7, 2016
- 1 min read
Suman is a rice cake originating from the Philippines. It is made from glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk, and often steamedwrapped in buli or buri palm (Corypha) leaves. It is usually eaten sprinkled with sugar. Suman is also known as budbod in theVisayan languages which dominate the southern half of the country. A widespread variant of suman uses cassava instead of glutinous rice.
This sticky rice has many names and varieties. Feel free to choose among the following: sticky rice, waxy rice, botan rice, biroin chal, sweet rice, mochi rice, pearl rice, and malagkit. If you are in the Philippines or any tropical place, getting fresh young banana leaves will not be a problem. If in case your situation is like mine wherein banana leaves comes fresh frozen from Asian stores, try not to run the leaves over fire to make it more flexible – it will most likely crack. Instead, gently wash it with warm water.
Some people like brushing cooking oil on the banana leaves before placing-in the glutinous rice mixture. You can do that too, if you desire.
I like having suman for breakfast and I always pair it with hot chocolate. How about you? Do you also eat suman for breakfast? What do you pair this with?
