Malunggay, marunggay, moringa

By Marifi Jara

QUELIMANE, Mozambique–By vegetable standards, I could have been a poster child.

I consumed the whole lot. And I’m not just talking about the typical green-therefore-disgusting variety that most children abhor like pechay, repolyo, kangkong, or green peas. Say slimy okra and saluyot? Bring it on. Mushy kalabasa? No problem. Grainy balatong? Yummy. Bitter ampalaya fruit or leaves? I’ll take those too. Boiled kamote tops? Let’s dip that in inasin con tuka. Sharp-tasting malunggay leaves in tinola? More in my bowl, please. The vegetable repertoire of my childhood palate was wider than the bahay kubo collection (go on, sing it).

Raised in a home of Ilocano-Pangasinense parents, I grew up believing that dinengdeng, bulanglang and pinakbet are staples of the Filipino dinner table. I have since learned, of course, that the rest of the country have other interesting vegetables dishes. And over the years, my range of vegetable favorites have also expanded to include gabi (in the form of Bicol’s popular laing), broccoli, watercress and most recently, beets and lentils.

But it’s malunggay I’m thinking about the most these days. In Pangasinan, it’s marunggay, which actually rings closer to the scientific name Moringa oleifera and its more common name moringa.

It was disappointing to find that moringa does not grow in abundance here because I saw plenty in the east African countries of Uganda and Kenya (though I got the impression that they don’t consume the fruit – which is delicious and fun to eat! – there judging from all the dried up shells hanging on trees, sayang!). I’ve only so far seen one marunggay tree here, and it was not even on Mozambique’s mainland, but in Catembe, an island with some holiday resorts just off the capital Maputo.

Marunggay has been hailed as the “miracle vegetable” for its very high nutritional content. Over the last few years, there has been a lot of government effort to promote and develop the plant not just for food as it is but for various other health products. There is also a Moringa Growers Federation of the Philippines Inc. (MGFPI), a private sector group that pursues, among other things, what it calls Malunggay Bionegosyo Project. Aside from the health benefits, it is also easy to propagate (proof positive: last summer, my dad re-planted several trunk cuttings at their backyard in San Fabian, assigning one each for the members of our immediate family’s next two generations, and amusing himself — and us — with a game of let’s-see-which-tree-will-be-most-productive).

For those of us food lovers and adventurers (and kitchen connoisseur-wannabes), the marunggay is a very promising ingredient.

Dagupan, for example, has for a couple of years now been conducting a malunggay cooking contest as part of the celebration of Nutrition Month every July and that has opened up whole new ways of looking at the vegetable. Doesn’t malunggay nuggets sound like something that even the most difficult child could be convinced to eat?

Alaminos and Sta. Barbara also have marunggay-related initiatives. There is that private-sector initiative for malunggay ice cream in Manaoag. And Malasiqui just last January laid claim to the “Malunggay Capital” title with a town-wide program for cultivating the plant (htttp://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/2010/01/17/malasiqui-declares-itself-%E2%80%9Cmalunggay-capital%E2%80%9D/#STS=g63cuvrh.lhe).

Now with all these marunggay developments, I reckon the time is ripe for a marunggay cookbook from Pangasinan. Villasis town has done it for their talong (http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/2009/12/30/villasis-to-launch-talong-cookbook/#STS=g63bdvo3.21zz), why not one for the precious and versatile marunggay?

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