Bringhe

"Bringhe would also be an example of a cultural change made through the use of ingredients from the Philippine landscape. Paella is generally made in Spain with chicken or rabbit, with rice and seasoning, especially saffron. Bringhe does use chicken, but the rice is malagkit and the sauce is coconut milk, to which is added a bark called ange, which turns the rice green instead of saffron yellow. Paella was created from the Spanish country landscape—the rabbit scampering by, the chicken bought from a farmer, the saffron which is the most expensive spice in the world and grows in Spain. Eating paella, therefore, is ingesting the Spanish landscape. Eating bringhe, however, is ingesting the Philippine landscape—the chicken running around on the farm, the coconut from a nearby tree, and the malagkit for fiesta cakes. This is a clear example of indigenization through a change of substance, spirit and name."

Doreen Fernandez, Culture Ingested: Notes on the Indigenization of Philippine Food, Gastronomica 3(1), p. 63. (The article is available here).

The paella came on a sizzling plate. Looking at the thin layer of yellow rice beneath pieces of shrimps, slices of squid, mussels on shell, and olives, I was immediately convinced that it was a brilliant idea to serve paella on a sizzling plate because it would surely produce a crust.  I decided to order paella because I saw it on the cooking show I watched the other night and it reminded me of a dish I tasted when I was growing up. I had very vague recollection of eating a savory yellow rice dish, and all the while I thought it was paella. The flavors of this paella, I found out from the very first bite, did not resemble what I had in mind.

I tried cooking paella several times, using various recipes found on the internet. Each time, I tweaked the recipe to exclude saffron, which was too expensive, and to add raisins. Unfortunately, incorporating raisins in the tomato-based paella did not produce the effect that I was trying to recreate. The raisins did give sweetness to the paella, but the experience was not as remarkable as I hoped it would be.

The dish that I was trying to cook had yellow rice, red bell pepper, chicken, and raisins. I do not remember how the entire dish tasted like as a whole, but I distinctly recall the pleasant surprise I got every time a raisin or two burst in my mouth. I searched for recipes of the Filipino version of paella and I stumbled upon bringhe, which is similar to paella. My wife reminded me that it is often served during fiesta in places near her and my hometowns (we both grew up in Nueva Ecija) and that I must have eaten it before. Some of the bringhe recipes available in the internet do include raisins.



Bringhe is basically glutinous rice (malagkit) and chicken cooked in coconut milk. Turmeric makes the rice yellow. (The late Doreen Fernandez mentioned in her paper that the bark ange turns the rice green. I do not know what ange bark is and I have never seen a savory green rice dish before.) It may also contain slices of chorizo, Vienna sausage or ham, strips of bell pepper, carrots, potatoes, raisins, and boiled eggs. Some recipes also require the use of banana leaves as cover during the final cooking stage.

I recently cooked bringhe, based on the recipe by Norma Chikiamco which was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer (you can read the article here; I first saw a modified version of the recipe in this blog), to find out, once and for all, if it was the yellow rice dish I ate years ago. I made some changes in the recipe. I cooked the raisins, rather than use them for garnish.  In lieu of Vienna sausage, I added meat loaf, and instead of margarine I used butter. I also adjusted the amount of water as needed to cook the rice. I did not use carrots, boiled eggs, and chicken liver and gizzard.  (The recipe found in this blog does require raisins to be cooked with the rest of the ingredients.)

My wife was right, what I was craving for was indeed bringhe. Although it had a crust, like the socarrat in paella, it did taste and smell different from its Spanish equivalent. Overall the dish was rich, and what I liked best about it was the intermittent contrast between the sweetness of the raisins and the richness of the coconut. It occurred to me that bringhe actually has an inangit component. Inangit is a dessert made of malagkit cooked in coconut milk and flavored with salt. Its flavor goes well with ripe mangoes. Eating the raisins embedded in lumps of savory rice, therefore, is analogous to indulging in inangit and mangoes.

Interestingly, raisins are not among the ingredients in many of the recipes of bringhe that I found on the internet. My wife also liked the raisins in the bringhe that I cooked for lunch.  She confessed she never liked bringhe when she was a kid. She hated it, she said, whenever a grown-up placed a portion of bringhe on her plate, convincing her that it was delicious.  Perhaps only an adult palate can truly appreciate bringhe.

Perhaps the bringhe she had before did not have raisins.