PUTO!

Shut your mouth, and savor this delicious rice cake

I always wondered where the origins of the Filipino Puto - the rice cake - came from. Were the origins from the Spanish word meaning “whore”, shocking many of our Spanish speaking friends around the world when we offer them a bite of “puto”?

I always thought this was inherited from the 333 years as a Spanish Colony, a cruel and funny lasting legacy to the Filipinos perhaps? I can just see Magellan’s face after being offered a bite of WHAT?

Or maybe not. See, as I was binge watching food videos on YouTube, I found the South Indian recipe for Puttu. Further research from Peppertrail.com shows that Puttu is one of the many culinary connections between South India and Southeast Asia. (You can read more on Peppertrail.com's article about the history of Puttu here.)

“Puttu is the general term for a variety of steamed rice and coconut dishes, both savory and sweet, from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the hill district of Karnataka. In old times savory puttu was steamed in bamboo tubes with pierced disc at the bottom, fixed tightly over a wide mouthed pot in which water was boiled.”

- Peppertrail.com

Several Southeast Asian countries still cook their rice cakes in bamboo tubes just like the original Puttu from South India.

Indonesia has Putu Bambu or Kue Putu. Here’s a link to the Indonesian recipe from Marvellina at the What To Cook Today blog https://whattocooktoday.com/putu-bambu.html #whattocooktoday.

Malaysia also has Putu Bambu and Putu Piring. Here’s a video from Manaweblife showing how they make Putu Bambu on the streets of Malaysia https://youtu.be/Oq5TlztumNM .

The Philippines has a variation of this called Puto Bumbong. Espressomo has a video of how Puto Bumbong is made and what this dessert means to him. https://youtu.be/H6O-OtdOW6E