Suman Recipe

Ibos (Visayan) or suman (Tagalog) is basically malagkit (sticky rice) wrapped in either banana leaves or coconut leaves.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of malagkit (sticky or sweet) rice
• a can of coconut milk
• fresh ginger or maybe anise seeds or anise extract
• sugar

Directions:

1. Cook malagkit just like you cook rice in your rice cooker but instead of using water, use coconut milk - about two-thirds of the can, when cooking malagkit, you have to use a little bit less of liquid than cooking regular rice.
2. Pound ginger and add this to your rice.
3. If you don't have ginger, add a tablespoon or two of anise extract or if you have the seeds, a sprinkle will do.
4. Once the rice is cooked, you can wrap them in the banana leaves (or foil) like you wrap lumpia.
5. Take about two tablespoonsful of the rice, put them on top of your banana leaf sheet that you have cut into square pieces about 6 inches by 6 inches or so, then roll to make a log, then twist both ends and tuck under the log.
6. Note: in order for your banana leaf not to tear, you have to run the leaf over a flame.
7. You also need to wipe the leaf with a piece of damp cloth.
8. Place the rice on top of the darker side of the leaf (this side doesn't have that whitish powdery stuff that covers the underside of the banana leaf).
9. Now, after you finished wrapping your rice, put them in a casserole or a large sauce pan, then boil the hell out of it, covered, again using coconut milk just enough to cover your pile (use the remaining coconut milk diluted with water).
10. I remember my mother used to cook the wrapped malagkit overnight but i suppose you can finish this in one hour just how i did the batch above - or until the liquid evaporates.
11. Serve rolled in sugar or as a side dish for ripe manila mangoes.