Buko Pandan Salad: A Filipino Dessert

Pandan leaves and water boiling away.

Mom sent me an SMS while they were out this morning; they went to the market to buy a week-supply of meat, vegetable and groceries. She requested me to make Buko Pandan salad since she was going to buy fresh buko water from her favored vendor, so she might as well get fresh buko meat prepped too. What's nice about mom's favored buko vendor is that you just tell him what the buko is for (salad, pie filling, etc.) and he already knows which buko to choose and how to prepare it for you. He's like a buko whisperer!

Buko is the Filipino term for young coconut. It's the green coconuts which yields clear sweet liquid and tender meat. Niyog is for the mature ones which have no coconut liquid and tough meat usually grated and squeezed to produce coconut milk. Since we're going to make a salad, young coconut meat is preferred.

Pandan is a tropical plant native to the Southeast Asia and its leaves widely used for cooking. When cooked it gives off a sweet aromatic botanical scent and flavor; but the leaves are not eaten. Known to the west as Screwpine leaves, it's mostly used for dishes involving rice, cakes or sweets. Surprisingly, the leaves can also be used as cockroach repellent.

We used to have a pandan plant around the house but I think I over-harvested the leaves at some point that it died, oops... Anyway, it's a good thing that mom had leaves stocked in the refrigerator. She also had green gulaman (dried Agar-agar) bars, nata de coco (coconut gel) cream and condensed milk. Very girl scout-like, always prepared. She does that a lot, have ingredients stocked and making me guess when she's going to use them until she sends me a texts message to do so.

I ❤ gulaman and nata de coco.

BUKO PANDAN SALAD

INGREDIENTS
5 cups water
15-20 pcs pandan leaves
2 pcs gulaman bars (any color, but preferably green)
3 cups young coconut meat strips (prepped to be used for fruit salad)
250ml all purpose cream
300 ml condensed milk
12 oz nata de coco, drained (optional)


PROCEDURE
1. In a large pot, boil water together with tied pandan leaves until aromatic and water has a green hue. Remove and discard leaves.
2. Add in torn pieces of gulaman bars. Stir and cook until no gulaman pieces are visible. Pour into a rectangular pan and cool. You can place the cooling gulaman in the refrigerator as long it doesn't burn/melt the shelve parts. Leave for about 30 minutes. While waiting...
3. Whip cream and condensed milk in a large serving bowl. Stir in coconut meat and nata de coco.
4. Take out the pan of gulaman and slice/cut into cubes. Stir into the rest of the coconut mixture.
5. You can serve immediately or store in the refrigerator to chill further.


I often make this on Sundays, alternating with fruit salad and tapioca pudding. Sunday lunch is always like a thanksgiving feast since everybody's home and it's market day; so the dining table is up to the brim with seafood, meat and vegetable dishes. When someone comes to visit they often joked that they'll make a habit of visiting us every Sunday. Not only because the hefty food tastes delicious, but we're hearty eaters and according to them it's fun to watch us eat so they get to do the same. Huh?

Anyway, after market day and cooking a feast, my mom would get exhausted by the afternoon. That's when I step in and mess up, ehrr I mean, take over the kitchen *evil laugh*... and the house helpers look at each other helplessly, they know what kind of chaos I leave when I take charge of the kitchen, teehee...