Exotic Food in Adams

One of the things we enjoyed in our visit to the upland town of Adams was their exotic food. It was a rare chance to try and savor these unique dishes. This is where you can find the tiniest eggplant, I would say in the world since they are like green buttons. They call it balbalusa. They just cooked it with vinegar to make into a dish called nilengta. It taste the same as the regular eggplant.

With the presence of the long Bolo River, locals are free to catch the eel. We call it igat or kiwet. They are like snakes of the river. It is the native variety and it tasted so good especially when it is cooked as adobo.

Just the same source of the wild ferns or pakpako is the river and the mountains too. Many ferns grow and they can just be easily uprooted. It can be blanch quickly and add in tomato slices squeezed with calamansi juice and seasoned with fish sauce. Presto, its pakpako ensalada.

Dinakdakang anangka is a jackfruit cooked in coconut milk. Red or brown rice was served and it is a nutritious variety of rice. Breaded fried frog or tokak was challenging to eat. They catch these from the farms. I learn to eat this during my childhood.

For the dessert we had their creation chesa cake, a yellow cake made of the fruit chesa. It was made into refrigerator cake accented with contrasting red colored wild red berries. Another interesting dessert was the karabasa (squash) cake placed inside its shell. They were so creative.

For our drink, it was cold coconut juice with shredded coconut meat and mixed with little ube jam served in a coconut shell. Bon apetit!