Pangasinan Town Profits from Buri Juice

Nov 12

At first glance it looks like a coconut tree standing in the middle of nowhere. Tall and solitary, it is a silent sentinel over surrounding rice fields. But on closer look subtle differences show—the curve of its leaves, its thicker trunk and a cluster of small brown nuts in place of young coconuts. This is the buri, a species belonging to the palm family. Growing to as high as over 40 feet, it is the tallest palm found in the Philippines.

This tree, called silag by locals, is the source of livelihood for families in Barangay (village) San Aurelio 1st in this eastern Pangasinan town. They use the buri’s large, fan-shaped leaves as roof for their homes, the starch from its trunk as food, and its nectar to produce tuba, a juice loved by many for its sweetness.

Sticky rice is dipped by locals in tuba to make the town’s most famous delicacy, patupat (rice cake). While the rest of the province’s rice treats are flavored with sugarcane extract, patupat from this area stands out as the only kind having buri juice as an ingredient. The fact that the buri palm is rare in the area and that the tree itself dies immediately after bearing fruit just once in its lifetime makes the patupat here even more special. “Rice flavored with tuba is more delicious than those with sugarcane juice,” says Nenita Perez, 53, a patupat vendor who helps her farmer-husband raise their seven children with her earnings.

Beside the highway lining the village, stalls selling tuba and patupat dot the landscape, with the occasional traveler stopping over to buy some of each as “pasalubong” for the family. The process of making patupat starts with wrapping uncooked glutinous rice in buri leaves woven into a square shape, and dipping it in a vat of boiling tuba. After two hours, the patupat is ready to be sold for P5 apiece, with no other seasoning or artificial preservatives added.

Fresh tuba juice, sold between P20 and P45, depending on the container size, goes well with patupat. For those with a sweet tooth, the syrup made from boiled tuba could be hardened to produce a natural candy, locally known as pacasiet. Villagers who make these delicacies buy whole buri trees for P1,000 to P1,500 each, earning at least P7,000 for every tree. “If I didn’t have this business, our life would be so much harder because farming is such an unpredictable trade,” says Perez.

Village elders relate the story of an old man from San Carlos town coming to the village in the 1950s to teach locals how to make patupat. Eventually, however, Balungao residents made it their own by adding tuba, their unique ingredient.

Original Article: Palm Juice is Secret Ingredient to Village’s Success by Johanna Morden in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on November 11, 2010