Bake with Patsitivity #7: What's for breakfast?

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What's up, foodies! 🎉 I'm here to make you all hungry again! 😅

The recipe I'll be sharing with you today could fall under different categories. Although it's mainly for breakfast, at home, we love serving this as dessert and as merienda, too. I grew up eating this mostly on weekends. My mother would wake me up and tell me, "There's puto and sikwate in the table!". Sikwate is hot chocolate made from pure cacao tablets, water, and sugar. For this recipe, I didn't prepare sikwate as my family members aren't huge fans of this hot drink.

Puto maya or simple puto is usually sold in public markets early in the morning just when the market opens. In other markets there's a section for fish and pork and other meat and a section for vegetables, fruits, etc, in my hometown, there's an area where you could buy food for painit pamainiit or a light meal before the actual breakfast. In the Philippines, we love eating too much that 3 regular meals a day aren't enough. 😅 So there's usually painit at 5:30 AM, breakfast at 7:30-8:00 AM, lunch at 12NN, afternoon snacks or merienda at 3PM, and finally, dinner as early as 6 PM.

Going back to the set-up inside our marker, there are long tables lined up next to each other and you can order puto and your drink of choice; there's coffee, milk, Milo, or the all-time favorite sikwate.

Without further ado, let's cook Puto or Puto Maya.

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Here's what you'll need

I got the original recipe here, but when I used it at home, I found out that the recipe doesn't deliver. For one it's too sweet and I ended up with excess coconut milk. So I'm sharing here the adjusted recipe that you could use at home.

half kg glutinous rice, soak in water for at least 8 hours (or overnight)
4 cups of coconut milk
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt
50g ginger, peeled and crushed
banana leaf

Glutinuous Rice	White Sugar

Note:
Why soak the glutinuos rice overnight? If you haven't seen and touched glutinous rice, it's thicker and harder than the usual rice we use for regular meals. You can skip soaking it in water but you'll end up spending more time steaming the puto.

Fresh coconut milk	Sliced Ginger

Note:
In our era, we can always get everything instantly, the same goes for coconut milk; you can buy the ones in the can but in my case, my father manually grated 2 pcs of coconuts. If you have access to fresh coconut milk, it's still the best one to use. If not, the alternatives in stand-up pouches and cans will do.

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Cooking procedure

Now here's the interesting part, there's more than one (1) way of cooking puto maya. Okay, that might not be interesting because that's just always the case in cooking. 😅 Customarily, I always look at different ways of cooking especially when it's my first time cooking it. After checking other procedures, I picked this one because I thought it's the simplest and fastest way to cook.

Shall we start cooking? ✨

[1] The banana leaves are optional, you can still enjoy puto maya without it but it has been a long-time tradition that store-bought puto maya is served in banana leaves formed in what appears to be a triangle. In case you don't have access to banana leaves, you can always skip wrapping the cooked puto in banana leaves.

In my case, we're surrounded by bananas; all I had to do was harvest a few the morning I prepared this recipe. If you have access to banana leaves, you cut the leaves into 6" by 8" each. Make sure not to skip this process or you'll end up with torn banana leaves. Pass one leaf at a time over a low flame until each is wilted and starts to look and feel glossy. Set aside the wilted leaves

[2] Add the glutinous rice in a medium-sized pan, add the milk, sugar and ginger and mix thorougly.

[3] Continue mixing until all ingredients are incorporated. Wait until the coconut milk thickens together with the rice. Once you'll see it's somehow boiling (small bubbles appearing on the mixture's surface) turn off the heat.

[4] Cover your steamer with the wilted banana leaves (in the absence of banana leaves, foil could be used as a substitute), then transfer the rice and coconut milk mixture into the steamer. Make sure it's evenly distributed, covering all areas of the steamer as much as possible. I have a huge 2-layer steamer at home but if you'll use a small rice cooker (which will do the job, too.), you might end up cooking in batches. This is okay but takes more time. Cover the steamer and wait for about 20-25 minutes in medium flame.

[5] At first, I was very nervous if I got the right recipe as well as the technique for cooking. If you've seen above, it seemed my rice and coconut milk weren't in the right proportion. But I just gave it more time to cook and after a few minutes, I finally conclude "I know how to cook puto now! Haha In the photo below, it dried up and it looks cooked. Remove it from the heat and allow to cool. But if you're too hungry, you can serve it right away of course.

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And time for breakfast begins

Now you can wrap the cooked puto maya in the wilted banana leaves and serve it with fresh ripe mangoes on the side. Here's my take on puto maya which looks a bit fancier than what you'll see in public markets. If you're craving and want to order, contact me on Discord. LOL! Just kdiding! 😂

My parents loved it and we ate everything before noon; that's a pretty great indicator that they loved my puto maya! Planning to cook this when my boyfriend comes over.

That's it for today, now it's time to drool on my finished products. Haha 😁

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