No one is born a great cook, we should study, learn and practice doing it.
Budbod is a Cebuano, our local dialect, term for a grated cassava wrapped on banana leaves. It's main ingredients are cassava, sugar and coconut milk but anyone can make their own recipe and experiment it with other ingredients.
A special budbod has a grated coconut with sugar filling and it makes the budbod more delicious.
This food is one of the Filipino delicacies perfect to be paired with your morning coffee or for afternoon snacks.
I also once posted a blog very similar to this you can check it HERE too. The main ingredient is the same but I used and experimented different filling which is chocolate chips and used evaporated milk instead coconut milk.
It was a holiday when my family went to our garden. We harvested our cassava plant and decided to cook budbod when we got home.
For today's blog, Let's cook BUDBOD with a strawberry chocolate filling.
INGREDIENTS
Cassava
Brown sugar
Muscovado sugar
Coconut
Beryl's chocolate compound block strawberry
Banana leaves for wrapping
Water
PROCEDURE
Peel, washed and grate cassava. We just use manual grater. You can also grate it through a grater machine. My husband do the grating.
Remove the cassava juice. We just use cloth with little holes (net) to remove the cassava juice by pressing it.
While my husband is doing the grating and removing of the cassava juice, I am tasked to prepare the banana leaves to be used for wrapping later.
I cut the banana leaves according to the desired width. Then I boiled water in the pan.
Dip the banana leaves in the boiling water to smoothen it. This is being done so the banana leaves won't get torn when folded later.
This is banana leaves looks like after dipping in the hot boiling water.
Cut the leaves according to the desired length. Cut the hard bottom part of the leaves to make the leaves looks clean. Clean it using a clean and dry cloth.
When I'm done, my husband told me to bring one coconut to our neighbor and let it grate on their grater machine. We can grate it manually but he felt tired after grating the cassava.
When I get back, he already mixed the brown sugar and muscovado to the cassava.
This is what remains from both 1/2kg brown sugar and muscovado.
My husband then get the pure coconut milk.
He then mix it to the cassava and sugar mixture. When everything was mixed thoroughly, it is then ready for wrapping. I am so sorry we don't have exact measurement of every ingredient because we just estimated it.
We start wrapping the grated cassava mixture when we remember the Beryl's chocolate compound block strawberry given by my brother. We will make that strawberry chocolate as filling to our budbod, my husband says. Sure, let's try but we should grate it, I said.
We grated the strawberry chocolate.
Put about two tablespoons of cassava mixture in the banana leaf.
Put the grated strawberry chocolate in between cassava mixture in the banana leaf to make it as a filling.
After putting the filling, roll the cassava in the leaf.
The cassava mixture in the leaf looks like this after rolling.
After rolling the leaf, fold both ends to lock it and the wrapping is done.
I and my husband helped each other in wrapping. This also serves as our bonding that day.
When everything is done, they are now ready for cooking.
Get a pot, cover the bottom with banana leaves atleast two to three layers. This is to protect our wrapped cassava from burning.
Pile the wrapped cassava accordingly that the water cant enter into the mixture.
This is how I arrange them.
My husband put water on the grated coconut for the second time and use the water for cooking. He said that it make the leaves more shiny. The water level is almost equal to the piled wrapped cassava.
Cook it for about 30 minutes or until tender and our budbod is ready to serve.
Here is our budbod, a grated cassava with coconut milk and strawberry chocolate filling.
Our neighbor who visited us while we are still wrapping it wondered what we put for filling. We said it is strawberry chocolate. He was shocked and said, we have a different experiment and our filling is so unique.
Indeed, experimenting on our food is limitless. We can experiment everything as long as it won't poison us.
Are you excited what it looks inside? Here it is.
Looks so yummy right? It's sweet.
All photos are mine.
