Recipe: Chef Gene Gonzalez's Sinantolan dish

MANILA, Philippines — For the longest time, my idea of enjoying santol, also known as cotton fruit, was to bite gently into its pulp and suck the sweetness out of it before letting go of the seed and discarding it.

I never bothered with the rind, throwing it away without much thought. It was only in recent years, when I was already in the publishing industry and specializing in food that I got to discover just what a delicious and beneficial dish Sinantolan is. It made me realize that I was throwing away an important ingredient when I would throw away the entire rind of the santol fruit because it is the main ingredient of Sinantolan. The dish, after all, is the grated soft inner part of the rind cooked with aromatics and pork bits (or shrimps or chicken) and gata (coconut milk) into the delicious and comforting Ginataan dish.

Here, Chef Gene Gonzalez shares his own take on Sinantolan, whose recipe appears in his "Little Coconut Book" published by Anvil Publishing.

“For me, the essence of Sinantolan is maceration in salt and squeezing the tannins out and getting a meaty texture but retaining a little tartness to balance the richness of coconut cream, fragrance of ginger, and heat from chilies,” said Chef Gene.

Sinantolan

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup thickly grated or chopped santol rind

1/4 cup salt

2 tsps. balaw or bagoong (shrimp paste)

2 1/2 Tbsps. minced garlic

2 1/2 Tbsps. sliced ginger

1/4 cup chopped pork

Cooking oil

1 cup heavy coconut cream (kakang-gata or first extract)

1/2 cup stock

2 Tbsps. patis (fish sauce)

1/2 tsp. pepper

1/2 tsp. salt

2 Tbsps. sugar

2 pcs. Chilies

PROCEDURE:

1. Add salt to the grated santol, squeeze fluid out, and strain well. Wash and squeeze out excess fluid again.

2. Roast bagoong wrapped in