Suman sa Lihiya 101 w/ Granny

I baked & cooked pasta but never showed any interest in making "kankanin," hehe too Western in my food, only until I had an on-hand Suman sa Lihiya 101 from the original cook of the family.

I did talked about Lola Auring in the past but never about her cooking prowess, well oh well, my aunts & Papa learned from her and I learned from Papa & my Titas, but this time I felt so lucky that I get to learn it firsthand from her how to make "Suman sa Lihiya." I say lucky because of the her seven grandchildren I was the only one who get to experience cooking with her. It is the most requested "suman" of Granny in all our family gatherings, from her cousins, friends and grandchildren - my browie & sister. Oh! anyway I did not tell you I was never fond of any form of kakanin after all. But despite the disliked to it, I find it interesting how granny make it, for entrepreneurial purposes, hehehe.

Suman sa Lihiya is a malagkit rice wrapped in banana leaves and greenish in color when cook because of the lye.

It starts with preparing the banana leaves that serves as the wrapper, Granny do it like pro, in estimating how many leaves to cut for 2 kilos of malagkit rice. While preparing the leaves, washed the rice first then let it drain in a "katsa" or flour cloth. After preparing all the leaves and the rice, time to add lye to rice. After mixing it well, the rice grains now yellowish in color, it is now ready to wrap. After wrapping, have it steamed for 4 hours, while steaming the suman, its time to prepare the syrup, just coconut milk & muscovado sugar.