80-Year-Old Grandma Prepares Mola Bola Snacks for Penitents Every Lenten Season
An 80-year-old grandma in Palo, Leyte, cooks her own version of ginataang mola bola for penitents as a Holy Week tradition.
Lola Camilla Potente, also known as Mana Mila makes mola bola gets its unique taste because of the ginger in it. Preparing this dish is like a penance because from Holy Thursday onwards, the rice and glutinous rice are soaked in water overnight.
The next morning, they are ground in the market, while Mana Mila’s relatives help in shaping the mola bola or bilo-bilo, as it’s known in Tagalog. They cook it on Good Friday, where the ginger is crushed to make the bilo-bilo more flavorful.
The spiciness of the ginger balances the sweetness of the coconut milk. It needs to be continuously stirred for almost an hour.
Meanwhile, a couple in Victoria, Laguna, sweetens their love with their version of ginataang, called pinaltok. The tradition of courtship in Laguna is called tupadahan, where the boy and the girl cook pinaltok together to get to know each other better.
Cooking pinaltok brought Heidi and Arnold Añonuevo closer. While bilo-bilo in other places is made from glutinous rice, pinaltok is made from grated ripe bananas.
Muslims also have their version of ginataan, which includes thickening agent called ‘natek’, made from a palm tree called Silal in Maguindanao. Their specialty in the ginataan showdown is their sindol, which is often served and shared during iftar, the first meal after fasting during the month of Ramadan.
Early in the morning, married couple Baidido Husain and his wife from Sultan Kudarat purchase the ingredients for sindol to cook and sell in the capital.
“Usually sa mga Muslim community, kasi sa month of Ramadan, nagtitiis kami na hindi kumain at hindi uminom mula umaga hanggang sa gabi. Unang-unang kinakain na hinahanap namin is sindol. Magluluto ako at mararamdaman naman ako ng komunidad na ako ay kapatid nila sa pananampalatayang Islam. At ‘yun ay ibibigay ko nang kusang loob,” said Sultan Pax Islamic Institutions administrator Ustads Rashid Midzapak.
The social media users expressed their reactions to her vow:
