Manong Ken Ilio's Carinderia

According to Doug Lansky of the Titanic Awards.

More at Huffington Post.

Really, now ….

Filipinos are very fond of sour fruits dipped in or sprinkled with something salty like salt, patis (fish sauce) and bagoong (fermented small shrimps or anchovies). Example are green mangoes, kamyas and any other unripe or manibalang (half-ripe) fruit. Sometimes we add vinegar to the dip or dressing, as in a salad.

When I was a kid, we prepared small or berry-like fruits like taghangin (don’t know the English or Tagalog equivalent of this), bugnay (bignay in Tagalog), lumboy (duhat in Tagalog) etc. in a gunggong. Instead of dipping the fruits in salt as we eat, we basically mixed and shook the fruit in salt so that the salt coated the fruit evenly.

I discovered that bing cherries (that are not ripe) are good for this preparation. It’s very easy to do. Just put cherries in a big drinking glass, pour a lot of salt, then shake vigorously – hold the glass by covering the top with one palm and holding the base with the other hand … then shake shake shake. I suppose you can use a container with a lid – eg Tupperware or Glad – and shake the fruit with salt again, vigorously. Use salt liberally.

That’s all.

Eat!

Woo hoo! All we needed was fruit, but we forgot.