Turon de Bohol and Halo-halo

All along, I thought the turon I frequently buy when in Quiapo was the best.  That was until my niece treated me to a Turon de Bohol at Saffron's. Incredibly delicious it was!

And then there's also Saffron's halo-halo served in a coconut shell.  Not only does it make a delightful dessert, or a refreshing merienda treat, the serving is quite plentiful, too.  I dare you finish one all by yourself! 

Merienda is a much favored pastime by Filipinos.  It is often served at four in the afternoon; however, at households that begin their day at the break of dawn, there can be a merienda served around ten in the morning.  

Typical merienda fares can be pandesal sandwiches, noodles, and salads.  There’s also soup like congee or arroz caldo, bachoy, pancit molo; and dinuguan served with puto; and different kinds of sweets. Tea, coffee or soft drinks are offered as refreshments.

Moreover, some of the most popular local merienda fares are made with glutinous rice and coconut  But then again, all in all they can be almost  anything: bibingkang cassava (cassava cake), cuchinta (steamed rice cake with lye water), palitaw (sweet rice dumplings), puto keso (steamed muffins with cheese), pichi-pichi,  biko (sticky rice cake with caramel topping), emapanda (meat turnovers), guinataang mais (corn in coconut milk), maruya (banana fritters),ensaymada (cheese buns), and siopao (steamed buns with filling).

Replica of a 19th-century ice box

Now, going back to Turon de Bohol and halo-halo, whenever enjoying these treats here in Bohol, I couldn't help but wonder when ice, or blocks of it, arrived for the first time in this region.  I may never find out due to my limited access to historical data on Bohol, but I have a fairly good idea when it arrived in old Manila (Intramuros).  It was when the country was still under Spanish rule.

Blocks of ice were imported from Boston back then.  Smaller chunks of which would then be delivered house-to-house wrapped in cloth or rice husks on a horse-drawn cart. A typically-affluent household back then spent about a thousand pesos a month to get a daily delivery.

The fortunate owners of ice boxes (as in above photo) were not the only ones able to buy and store ice during that time. According to Ambeth Ocampo, the alternative method used to store a block of ice was wrapping it with a blanket and then putting it in the part of the house which was least cool, or inside a dry closet without any circulating air. Supposedly, with the exception of the sun and fire, whatever will keep a man warm will keep ice cold.

Also, according to Ocampo, the ice came from the Boston Lakes, famous of which was Wenham Lake ice. It was so pure and very clean, as well as stayed cool longer than other ices. It also proved suitable for putting in one’s drink or mixing with food. Hence the reason why the imported ice that Manilans enjoyed then came all the way from Boston.

But of more interest was the fact that had it not been the export of ice to India, in which Manila happened to be along the route, local folks back then would have never experienced any chilled refreshments or sorbet. 

Ocampo wrote, “On Average, the trip from Boston to Calcutta took 103 days; the record breaking time was 86 days. Now, how much of ice melted? Well, to give you an idea, only 38 tons of ice reached Calcutta from the original 160 tons that left Boston. It was a loss of 76 percent, but the Tudor Ice Company still made money. It must have been very profitable, because it was not long before Tudor had about a dozen competitors.”

Before Manila's ice age, the locals enjoyed a glass of water cooled in an earthenware tapayan. Ocampo knew about this. What he was unable to find from archives and old newspapers were firsthand accounts of the Filipino’s first encounter with ice. He believes that such stories would definitely make an interesting footnote in our cultural history.

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Source:

The Ice Man Cometh by Ambeth Ocampo

Aguinaldo's Breakfast and More Looking Back Essays

Anvil Publishing 1993

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