Biko for the New Year

In the run-up to the New Year, you might want to cook something sweet and sticky and the easiest dessert to make is biko for Visayans or sinukmani for Tagalogs. Each one might have his/her own recipe for biko but the recipe below is so scrumptious it will make you forget your low-carb diet. Adding finely chopped calamansi peel, which I learned from my Bol-anon students, will give it a lemony tang which is a good counterpoint to the rich coconut milk and brown sugar taste. Try it and I'm sure you will like it.

This recipe serves four hungry persons so you may need to double or treble the measurements if you're cooking for a bigger group.

Moni's Biko

2 cups malagkit (preferably tapul or black)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 big coconut, grated
1 1/2 c water
1 tbsp finely chopped peel calamansi or grated lemon rind
2 tbsps pounded ginger

Put 2 cups malagkit or sticky rice in rice cooker pot or thick pot using an equal amount of water. Add salt and pounded ginger; push the ginger to the bottom of the pot. Cook until done. Add 1 1/2 cups water to the grated coconut and extract the milk. Mix coconut milk, 3/4 cup brown sugar and chopped calamansi peel in a wok (kawali, kawa). Bring to a boil, then put in medium heat and keep on stirring until the mixture is thick. You need to stir continuously to prevent the coconut milk-brown sugar mixture from curdling. [To test the mixture for thickness, put a drop of the coco milk-sugar mixture (latik) in 1/4 cup water.] If it dissolves in the water, it isn’t ready yet so continue simmering until it is thicker. Stir in the cooked malagkit and mix thoroughly with the latik.