Aligue Rice

So delicious,  worth ditching your diet for a day or two ;-)

Had to take another picture of the beautiful aligue covered grains

I have very vivid memories of my Lola and Mom cooking Taba ng Talangka. They would boil some water then pour it over the live tatangkas.  After a few minutes the water would be drained, then using their fingers they would squeeze out the aligue from the talangka.  At the end of this tedious process their fingers would hurt from all the squeezing.  They would then cook the aligue with loads of garlic and onion, and simmer with vinegar.  The delicious scent of this wonderful dish can be smelled from my room.  I would eagerly count the minutes to when I could have lunch, and how many servings of aligue rice I would be consuming.  At the table I would show my appreciation to  Mom and Lola for all the hard work they put into making this.

But these days it is more convenient to use the bottled version, though not as good as Mom's and Lola's.  It has been a while, most likely 4 years, since I have had this dish.  Yesterday we bought two bottles at P280.00 each, we were surprised that it costs that much.  So I made sure that I got everything out of the bottle.  To make it more bottled version more flavorful we sauteed minced garlic and diced onion, then we lower the heat before adding the taba ng talangka to the pan.

It was delicious, so worth it, though I probably need to double the dosage of my anti-hypertension meds today :-)