one filipino dish a week

In the Philippines, puso or hanging rice is a Visayan thing if not a truly Cebuano thing. You won’t really see this in other parts of the country. It’s a pretty ingenious way of making rice portable. The lukay or young coconut leaves are weaved in such a way that it creates a little bag for the rice. When I was looking around online (aka wikipedia) there are apparently different shapes that are made for puso. I’m only familiar with the heart-shaped version which is the most common that can be seen. I imagine that the name puso came from the heart-shaped version because puso means heart in Filipino. The English term “hanging rice” pretty much comes from the fact that after it’s cooked the individual bags of rice are tied and hung up for storage like this (although the shape in that picture is called binaki or frog-style).

I associate puso with the beach and street food. We always used to bring puso and bbq when we went to the beach. The coconut leaves give a wonderful fragrance to the rice which makes it a perfect pair with the smokiness of the pork bbq. Eating puso and bbq with wrinkled hands and salty taste buds after hours of playing in the water… If only I can go back to those wonderful childhood memories.

Manang Clarita (who sells foodstuffs for a living) taught The Girl and I how to make puso. Although, she was trying her hardest to slow down it’s pretty much second nature for her so it’s still really fast for a novice.

Once you have all the coconut leaves formed you put rice, close it up by knotting the open end, and then boiling the rice. Make sure to only fill it up half way because the rice expands!

Eat Filipino Food!