Vietnamese Pinipig
If you see this artificially-colored bag of young rice cereal at your local Asian store, don’t even bother to pick it up from the shelves. Save yourself the trouble.
It’s made by a company in Vietnam called Himing Co. Ltd. and is labeled “Cereal Flakes”. It doesn’t come with a manufacture or expiry date.
I got it at the Filipino Sari-Sari Store. It’s what Filipinos call “pinipig”, a young immature rice that’s harvested while still green, pounded and winnowed, then turned into the most delicate of rice cakes and pastries. I’ve had this hankering for the rice cake we call “Kalamay Pinipig” for some time now.
What a disappointment! I should have known from the bright green it was artificially colored. The rice itself had a peculiar smell – old and musty and not at all appetizing like it should be.
At that point, I should have thrown it all in the trash where it belonged. Strangely enough, I persisted. Hey, sometimes your imagination just gets the better of you, right?
When I started this blog I said I was going to post both sucesses and failures. So, here’s one big blunder I hope to never make again. It’s not pretty…
Ohhh…how my sisters are going to laugh when they see this and I won’t blame them! It’s not just a failure, it’s a lesson learned.
And the lesson I learned is, when it comes to certain recipes, you just have to start with the best ingredients or nothing at all. For pinipig, I just have to wait until I can source the best grains…probably in the foothills of Mount Pinatubo in Zambales, and not the foothills of the Rockies in Colorado….
March 25th, 2006 at 8:39 am
that’s what it looks like – that awful green stuff that she puked out in the exorcist. but, hey… that’s the only way you will learn about what’s real and not..
March 25th, 2006 at 8:52 am
tasted like it too…ugh!
June 29th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
[...] Unfortuantely for me, the only pinipig available at the Filipino Sari Sari Store was the same Vietnamese pinipig I featured in an earlier post.? Rather than spoil the whole thing, I went ahead and substituted the pinipig with some crushed cornflakes to simulate the crunch and added just a dash of vanilla.? It’s not the same thing of course.? Good pinipig has this delicate, sweet aroma and flavor,?almost like vanilla.??I love the subtlety of that pinipig flavor, only the?fresh ones have it of course.? If pinipig is not used right?after processing,?it loses that delicate flavor pretty fast. [...]