Filipino Kakanin Cocktail Buffet

CEBU, Philippines — There is currently a need for infrastructure to support the rapid urbanization and the tourism industry. Hence, the fast construction of hotels, condominiums and malls. Towering structures have changed the skyline of Cebu City and the neighboring cities of Mandaue and Talisay.

All types of malls are being constructed, from regional malls to strip malls or shopping plaza, and property developers like Elin Land Development Inc. has built one in Mandaue City. I was recently invited by his colleague, Dr, Abel de Manuel, to the dedication and inauguration of Northdrive Mall in Mandaue City. It is a two-story building with the ground floor operating like a regular mall with restaurants, food kiosks, fast food outlets, banks with ATM machines, coffee shops, refreshment stands and even laundry services.

The second story is dedicated to Christ Commission Fellowship’s church activities and community services. It has a modern auditorium equipped with the state of the art audio and video equipment and seats 2,000 members and their guests. It has even a coffee shop that is aptly named the Cup of Faith.

After the dedication, food was served, a Filipino Kakanin Cocktail Buffet at the Co. Lab., which serves as headquarters of the developer and is also available for clients that need a work area or study center with good wi-fi connection or a conference room. On the buffet table, various serving plates were laden with mangoes, bud-bud, puto maya, cassava cake, puto cheese, cuchinta, sapin-sapin and palitaw.  For drinks, sikwate shots and brewed coffee were served.

I have been a food writer for the past 16 years and this was the first time that I had been invited to a Kakanin Cocktail! In the very remote past, I tried how to make some of these breakfast delicacies like the bud-bud. You have to grate the coconut to extract the milk, prepare the banana leaves for wrapping, placing it over fire to soften it. The mixture of glutinous rice, coconut milk, sugar and pounded ginger is half-cooked; then removed from the pot, and a premeasured amount of the mixture is individually wrapped in banana leaves and cooked again! After the second cooking, the bud-bud is ready for serving. Price of bud-bud at that time was two pesos each, and that was the end of my culinary adventure, excuse me, to make any type of dessert.

For a brief period, I was at the worship services presided by CCF senior pastor Peter Tanchi before I made a tour of the mall and saw the types of goods and services offered at the ground floor. I sat at the Cup of Faith coffee shop and I remembered a Bible verse: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” [Matthew 22:21]. The first floor was designed for the corporal comforts of life and the second floor was planned for the spiritual salvation – and so I concluded that Northdrive Mall is a mall with a stairway to heaven.