“TINAPAI”, an original rice cake recipe.
This is our food, this is how we eat...
As we all know, after setting sail with five ships from Seville, Spain on August 10, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan landed in “Zamal (Samar, Philippines) on March 16, 1521. After Magellan’s death on April 20, 1521 and after burning the ship “Conceptione”, the two remaining ships sailed from the Visayas on to Mindanao, “whose king in order to make peace with us, drew blood from his left hand marking his body, face, and the tip of his tongue with it as a token of the closest friendship, and we did the same. I (Antonio Pigafetta) went ashore alone with the king in order to see that island.”
After drinking palm wine with the king, Pigafetta noted down the recipe of the food:
“Then the supper, which consisted of rice and very salt fish, and was contained in porcelain dishes, was brought in. They ate their rice as if it were bread, and cook it after the following manner. They first put in an earthen jar like our jars, a large leaf which lines all of the jar. Then they add the water and the rice, and after covering it allow it to boil until the rice becomes as hard as bread, when it is taken out in pieces.”
In his vocabulary of Visayan words, he noted
"Acerte fogacie de rizo = tinapai = for certain Rice cakes"
Blair, E.H. (Editor). The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXIII, 1519-1522, by Antonio Pigafetta. Translated from the Originals. The Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland, Ohio. MCMVI. The Project Guttenberg EBook-No. 42884.
