dinengdeng nga uong, papait, kabatiti, patani, nasagpawan iti kaluit (kumukusay)

This particular dinengdeng might somewhat be a weird for some, but this is it, I've done it, just so to prove/show the versatility of the dinengdeng or an Ilokano way of preparing and presenting and designing available vegetables and pair or combine it with almost everything edible, palatable, tasty, easy.

And here's a dinengdeng with a shellfish called kaluit or kalwit (also called sikadsikad, maninikad, aninikad, kumukusay). This is the plicate conch (scientific name: Strombus labiatus) which is abundant along reef coastlines. Its shell is kind of hard and its "meat" wedged deep spirally inside its whorl and spire you have to use a "pick" like that of a pomelo thorn to gouge it out. Some just resort to cracking the shell and simply gather the meat and cook it in a savory soup. But like agurong, suso, leddeg, bisukol, picking/extracting out (sultop or tudok) the meat is a thing to enjoy. Cooking this shellfish is simply boiling it with the usual tomatoes, ginger, onions, lemon grass like that of the usual freshwater clams and mollusk.

But here, it graced my dinengdeng of uong (those are straw mushroom buttons), papait, patani, and kabatiti (what an unusual bunch!):

What a mix! The broth is so tasty, it brings forth the aroma of the sea, the reefs, the seaweeds, and the dinengdeng is heavenly, as it were, as  the kaluit essence is enhanced by the umami of the straw mushroom, the sweetness of the kabatiti, the starchiness of the patani, and the inevitable bittersweetness of the papait.

My rice, please!

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More dinengdengs:

• Dinengdeng, glorious dinengdeng!
• Dinengdeng/inabraw, more, once more
• Dinengdeng once more, because one can live in dinengdeng alone
• "The Dinengdeng Debate: Authencity and Cuisine"
• Dinengdeng a bunga ti singkamas, jicama fruit stew
• Dinengdeng bunga ti singkamas a naalseman iti palali
• Dinengdeng a sabunganay, banana blossom stew
• Dinengdeng a mais, white corn stew/soup
• Dinengdeng a marunggay with kaggo, marunggay leaves and clam soup
• Langka/jackfruit and pallang/winged bean dinengdeng
• Dinengdeng a saba! banana/plantain stew
• Karabasa & utong, squash goodies and string beans stew
• Fresh veggies for dinengdeng in casantolan
• Dinengdeng nga aba, stewed taro leaves/stems/roots
• Kalalaki nga alukon, "male" alukon
• Dinengdeng with tinapa (smoked mackerel)
• Dinengdeng with fried paltat
• Dinengdeng nga uong-mais ken uggot-marunggay, wild mushrooms and marunggay leaves
• Saluyot and rabong variation--with bulong-sili, kalunay and utong
• Buridibod a kamangeg nga addaan pallang ken kalunay sa nasagpawan tinapa
• Red/purple katuday

For more Ilokano vegetable dishes, you can follow Ilokano Food page on Facebook and enjoy more sumptuous photos of dinengdeng and other vegetable dishes plus more veggies! 

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dinengdeng nga uong (luklukanos) ken uggot-marunggay, wild mushrooms and marunggay leaves [repost]

Dinengdeng a luklukanos ken uggot/bulong ti marunggay

Uong season these rainy months and here's one kind of mushroom which grows abundantly in the open fields, especially cornfields (in the rotting corn stalks and leaves left in the fields after harvest). It is generally called "luklukanos"  but also called "uong ti mais" or "uong-mais".

Those fond of mushroom as a dinengdeng or as a soup agree that this kind of uong is perfect with leafy greens like paria, marunggay or saluyot. I tried to pair it with marunggay. I gathered the very tender leaves for this uong which I bought rather expensively from a corn farmer's wife who is selling his husband's uong harvest from house to house.

I simply boiled the uong in a little bugguong (not much bugguong so it won't spoil the uong's distinct aroma and flavor) and some onions, simmered it, and just before serving, I added the marunggay, and here's it:

It's so tasty, the broth delicious, sweetish, comforting. As a mushroom soup should be. The marunggay is just as crisp and succulent. It demands lots of steamed rice, though. But what the heck, this is like a once upon a blue moon treat, so, it's s kind of sweet indulgence.

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dinengdeng nga uong ken kabatiti ken balang a paria, straw mushrooms soup with patola and wild bittermelon

Mushrooms, mushrooms! And what’s more delicious than those growing and picked from the wild, like these gorgeous straw mushrooms (locally called uong garami or uong saba):

And paired with these equally wild or “native” vegetables for a truly exotic veggie delicacy—wild bittermelon (balang a paria) shoots and fruit, and patola (sponge gourd, kabatiti):

Small but insanely bitter vegetable fruit to challenge or tantalize your palate:

Cooked in the traditional Ilokano dinengdeng way, here’s the eventual result—all that mushroom flavor with the double dose of exotic wild paria bittery goodness and sweetened by the native kabatiti, all in fusion with the essence of bugguong (fish paste/sauce). And no, if you cooked it right and rightful, the kabatiti will not make it the more bitter but its sweetness as fruit veggie will magically moderate the pait of the paria. The end result is just so amazing and a beauty to behold:

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See more mushroom treats and recipes:

Uong ken lantong-utong, wild mushroom with young bean stalks/shoots

Dinengdeng nga uong-mais ken uggot-marunggay, wild mushrooms and marunggay leaves

Dinengdeng nga uong-bunton ken balang a paria, wild mushroom soup with bitter melon leaves

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dinengdeng nga uong-bunton ken balang a paria, wild mushroom soup with bitter melon leaves

Dinengdeng nga uong-bunton ken balang a paria.

Yet another mushroom here growing and picked from the wild: uong-bunton, named sobecause it usually grows near anthills (termite hills or bunton) during the rainy seasons and gathered after a night’s thunderstorm (the lightning is believed to be inducing the growth of mushrooms and other fungi, especially wild edible ones.

One early morning, an ambulant vendor passed by the house and offered this bundle for about PhP50. I readily bought it, along with some wild bitter melon tops the same vendor sells (she sure knows the fact that uong and paria are inevitable soup partners).

With a little bugguong (or patis, or salt, if you’re not used to the distinct bugguong aroma of a mushroom soup) and some slices of onion boiled in a minimal water, cook the uong, boil and simmer a bit for it to ooze its sweet and so tasty essence into the soup. Add the paria a minute before putting off fire while the soup’s still boiling. Serve immediately and consume the paria at once so that it won’t render your soup more bitter than tasty:

The tastiness and sweetness of the tender uong-bunton and the soup is more pronounced with the subtle bitterness of the paria (if cooked right briefly, paria leaves, even if it’s a wild variety, is not all extremely bitter):

More: 

• Uong ken lantong-utong, wild mushroom with young bean stalks/shoots
• Dinengdeng nga uong-mais ken uggot-marunggay, wild mushrooms and marunggay leaves

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kuditdit, kudit/kudet (bracket fungus, tree ear fungus)

Come rainy or thunder-stormy season, especially when the late afternoon rains bring a plenty of lightning and thunder, you can expect that early in the morning, an abundance of mushroom has grown in the wild, like the uong-kalaw, uong-bunton, or uong-managadu and many others. The rains and the lightning also induce edible fungi, like the kuditdit (also called "kudet" or "kudit", bracket fungus or tree ear fungus). There are some kinds of kuditdit, some are commercially grown (large ones called oyster/abalone mushroom), but the most popular and most preferred of course is the small wild and "native" kuditdit which grows on dead/rotting trees. I used to pick, as a child in Nueva Vizcaya, kuditdits on fallen mango and tamarind trees.

Wild kuditdit growing on a dead tree. Photo from Wikipedia.com

Kuditdit has also become rare nowadays, and thus it has become a kind of another exotic fare. You can usually find them sold in the market and is quite pricey but nonetheless a best seller as it is a prized companion to a savory dinengdeng/inabraw especially when partnered with wild mushrooms.

Kuditdit for sale by the glassful.

When preparing kuditdit, you have to wash/rinse it thoroughly to remove dirt, but don't squeeze it too much and just rinse it once or twice only, to preserve its natural flavor and succulence.

Kuditdit is great with paria, leaves or fruit, and with other leafy vegetables and veggie fruit like pallang and tarong.

Kuditdit with wild mushrooms, kalunay (amaranth, wild spinach) and kabatiti fruit.

The soup/broth is so good with the fusion of two wild fungi goodness, sweetened by the young kabatiti!

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dinengdeng/inabraw, more, once more

Just can't get enough with dinengdeng (inabraw, if you will), this Ilokano gourmand in me (yes I consider dinengdeng kind of a gourmet), I have it in almost daily basis, my life could be so sorry and bleak, truly incomplete without it in my table in a day. I have exclusively blogged about it here and here today, once more. And more to come next blog entries. For dinengdeng is so versatile a dish it can be done in countless of ways and means with a variety of available veggies (especially green leafy) in season or all year round, as long as there's the blessed bugguong ready to lend its distinct flavor and aroma to every dinengdeng combination you can think of.

So, here are some more of my dinengdeng creations:

Winged beans (pallang), string beans (utong) and camote tops soured with young tamarind fruit.

Kuditdit or kudet (bracket fungi, tree ear fungus) and wild ampalaya (paria a balang/paria ti bakir)shoots with kinirog nga udang (fried freshwater shrimps).

Wild ampalaya shoots and straw mushrooms (uong-garami or uong-saba) with fried fish.

Chayote with dried ipon (goby fries). This is my personal favorite, that of chayote and/or papaya (green papayas) solo dinengdeng, which I usually flavor with lots of crushed laya (ginger). The soup is so savoury and gingery hot.

Uong, young tarong, sabong ken uggot kabatiti, with shrimps. 

A very savory dinengdeng I promise you, mainly because of its prized gamet (dried red seaweed). Gamet is like the Japanese nori. It enhances the flavor and aroma of the dinengdeng, especially its broth. Gamet seaweed is primarily gathered and dried in the northernmost towns of Ilocos Norte (mainly Burgos, and Pagudpod), and even in Cagayan (like Claveria). In this dinengdeng, you have there young tarong, sili nga aruy-oy (sweet pepper), and the flowers and shoots of kabatiti (the native, angular sponge gourd, patola).

Kalunay, katuday, uggot ken sabong kabatiti, with broiled native paltat (catfish).

Boiled utong (cowpeas) and sabong ken uggot ti karabasa (squash flowers and shoots), with bits of deep fried pork. Quite a different dinengdeng, you say, but it's good.

Tugi ( lesser yam, Chinese yam, Dioscorea esculenta Lour.), pallang, katuday (katuray, West Indian pea), and kalunay (spinach, amaranth, kulitis) with udang. This one, with the presence of the tugi, can also be called a buridibod. And it's so good, the soup is sweetish.

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uong ken lantong-utong, wild mushroom with young bean stalks/shoots

This is edible wild mushroom (uong or u-ong), variably called uong-kalaw, uong-bunton, uong-kimat, or uong-managadu. Uong-kalaw because some folks say this mushroom might be produced or induced by the bird called kalaw (in what way I really don't know, anyway). Uong-bunton because it usually grows around some anthills (bunton) or "termite queendoms" or on moist reddish and clayish earth. And uong-kimat and uong-managadu because it really is induced by lightning and they grow and sprout abundantly in the night after a rainy, thunderstorm-y afternoon or dusk, to be picked in the early morning.

This one kind of wild mushroom is perfect for soups with leafy greens like saluyot, paria (bittermelon) especially the wild ones called paria ti bakir or paria a balang, marunggay, camote, kalunay or kuantong (spinach), or any other edible tops and shoots and young leaves an Ilokano can imagine.

The sweet wild uong broth is so savory and so tasty it's as if it is what vetsin or MSG or umami is made from. I also like the slippery saluyot-like texture of this particular mushroom. Which just suits well with green leafy veggies with somewhat coarse or rough texture like saluyot itself and that of the leaves, stalks and shoots of utong (string beans, also called cowpea). It also blends well with nasabeng a bulbulong or greens with a peculiar smell of tartness or sharpness (napas-eng) like that of marunggay and young alukon leaves and again, string bean leaves.

This time, I decided a mushroom and string bean leaves combination. Freshly picked utong leaves are in abundance in the market along with this seasonal wild mushrooms.

You'll have to clean and wash the mushrooms thoroughly but do not squeeze them thoroughly else all that sweetness and tastiness of its succulence will be sucked out. Remove all traces of dirt or earth and wash and rinse it in running tap water. Also, as this kind of mushroom is prone to attack by some unsightly and very tiny pinkish and whitish worm, inspect the mushrooms for they might be starting to grow in there, between the filmy strands (called "gills") under the mushroom cap. "Older" mushrooms (those fully grown) which are starting to wilt or wither are suspects of being invaded by these worms, they even dig themselves in the stem.

A mushroom soup should not be too salty so put in just a mild amount of bugguong in the boiling water. Some do not like bugguong in their mushroom soup at all because they claim the bugguong will overwhelm the broth and it will become "naangdod" or smelly/bugguong-y; you can use just table salt, if you prefer. Or just put in a few drops of bugguong juice just for the heck of it to be called inabraw or dinengdeng the Ilokano way (nabugguongan or binugguongan).

Anyway, because of the utong tops, I need to neutralize the "sabeng" or "pas-eng" with a right quantity of bugguong sauce.

Optionally, you can put in some onion slices, some crushed garlic "teeth" for aroma and flavor. And then put in the mushrooms and let boil and simmer (in the bubbling water already flavored with bugguong). When the mushrooms are cooked, put in the utong tops and simmer for some time. Do not overcook the utong leaves, make it just crispy succulent. You can put in some tomato slices just before you serve it, if you prefer. Serve immediately.

And here's it:

Enjoy the savory soup and the slick mushroom goodness!

A closer look:

(Originally blogged November 14, 2008)

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