Approximating Binakoe

Binakoe is definitely an Akeanon dish popularly known throughout the Philippines as "binakol". The net is rich with information on how it is done but always falls short of its spirit. Most surfers encounter clones which definitely alienate them farther off from its true nature and deprive them of the chance of feasting on this rare delicacy the way Datu Puti had it in his time.

Nemo dat quod non habet. That's the rule. Nature without spirit is ironically unnatural. Factual but not real. Bereft of its true essence. Artificial. An imitation. Preparing 'binakoe' without understanding its philosophy is deception. You cannot cook something which in the first place you do not understand.

Binakoe dates back to the pre-Spanish Panay settlers when cauldron was a very rare commodity. It has been handed to us by the Ilayanons who introduced us to a couple of variety of preparing it. I for myself witnessed and feasted on them during my visits in upstream Jal-o, notably in Dayas and Benitinian years back. When in Dayas or Benitinan, a visitor is asked by the children with this riddle: "What would you make of a fowl when you are tired of eating it grilled but find yourselves in the middle of nowhere with nothing but salt in hand and some wild herbs to collect around?"

Cooking a Binakoe the way our forebears did it.

The answer to that is of course, "Binakoe."

BINAKOE – HOW IT IS DONE 

Ingredients:

       1 dressed native chicken (preferably one year old or younger-talin o sueog) cut into bite-size pieces

       1 big onion, quartered (sibuyas)

       1 piece ginger (about the size of your thumb, peeled and pounded – pinaepag nga euy-a)

       1 teaspoon, black pepper (whole - recado)

       1 piece dried bay leaf (dahon it recado)

       Lemon grass (enough to seal the mouth of young bamboo internodes – tang-ead)

       Salt to taste (asin)

       (You may also mixed some Aeabihig leaves or fruits to give off sourly taste to your viand)

  

Pre-cooking Preparation:

    For Variety One – You will need one or two cleaned young bamboo culms* taken out of a newly felled down bamboo and cut to about ½ meter from each node. The hollow internode is where you put in the meat** already mixed with the rest of the ingredients. Seal each culm with the washed lemon grass. Place it perpendicularly near a fire for about an hour, regularly turning the culm to even up the heat and to avoid burning the inside of the internode.

    *Butong is the better alternative than the kawayan and the rest of the bamboo varieties as it is juicer. 

    **The dressed chicken, prior to cutting it into pieces, is pounded softly as if being beaten down, thus the term, binakoe. The wisdom behind this practice is to make the meat tender but firmer. It helps also in removing those sticky serum-like strands that enveloped certain parts of the muscle structure of the meat.  

Binakoe cooked on a young coconut drupe.

    For  Variety Two – one or two young coconut fruit (also called 'butong' in local dialect). Do not remove the coconut husk. Use a crosscut saw in opening finely the top of the young coconut. Discard the juice but leave the endosperm (the young coconut meat or drupe) untouched. On the hallow space of the fruit put in the mixed ingredients and the meat, capping them with the lemon grass. Replace the top of the young coconut to serve as cover of the lid. Cook it directly on fire for about 1 to 2 hours. 

Feast on it with you bare hand and match it with bisaya (upland rice variety). You won't regret scaling the heights to Benitinan or Dayas. Those are just bonus besides the opportunity of communing with nature at its best.