Dagwey Spread?! I have to admit I was completely stumped. I assumed it must be a fruit, since it was made into a preserve or jam with the addition of sugar. But it came in this jar without a label, with the name written on the cap in pentel pen, so it was a bit dubious at best. If not for the good friend who had carted it back from a recent trip to Nueva Vizcaya, Cagayan and into the hinterlands of the Mountain Province, I probably would have passed on this jar if I saw it on a grocery shelf. I googled dagwey and finally figured out it is an indigenous fruit tree with small apparently tart apple green fruit, here (go to second page on that link, it is quite hard to locate a photo of the fresh fruit otherwise). They dry them into “prunes” and frankly, they do indeed taste like prunes… :)
If I am not mistaken, the dagwey fruit (saurauia subglabra) may come from the “Kalahan Reserve” an area of 13,000+ hectares set aside and managed by indigenous people. They harvest quite a bit of fruit from this reserve and it is processed into jams, preserves, etc. among other food products. It’s apparently a very interesting model of sustainable resource management. I liked the jam, and would definitely like to try baking with the dried version of the fruit. They reminded me of some cashew prunes I experimented with a few years ago, made into muffins, here, and served with cashew butter. Which reminds me, I just received two kilos of fresh, sun-dried (not baked, fried or salted) cashew nuts from palawan that I need to roast and make some cashew butter… As for the dagwey spread, the next time you see it at a bazaar, grocery or health foods store, try some… it’s very native and often wild and hand collected, sustains small communities caring for their environment, and it tastes pretty good as well! :)
18 Responses
I clicked on the link and the photo of the dagwey fruit looks like small green tomatoes!Interesting..
Loved your curvy spoon!…to hang on the rim of your jam jar or coffee mug :)
Betchay, it’s actually a “jam spoon”… :)
jam spoon = smartness
Never heard or seen dagwey before. Thanks MM for the interesting info about dagwey.
The dagwey fruit looks like the pickled fruit that they sell on the sidewalks of Baguio.
Is the jam spoon one of those “special” implements? Much like the bone marrow utensil? :-)
Thanks for sharing. Very interesting! Am on the lookout for community based produce. I browsed through the pages and it’s very interesting what that church org is doing. I wonder which supermarket carries dagwey jam. But the dried ones are available in Ritual in Makati.
Anne, not really, it’s in stainless steel, and you can get them from places like Pottery Barn or Crate & Barrel for a couple of bucks. They are just interesting as you can “hang” them on the side of the bottle if you are serving informally at home for your own breakfast, without guests around…
Haven’t tried dagwey jam yet…looks exotic (nakakatakot, hahaha!)
Love the jam spoon!
Re: spoons – I received a bunch of them as freebies from Amway a few years ago! Been using them as teaspoons, now I know another use for them.
MM just saw that the Croc post is password protected but I was able to access it without entering any password. Is your site able to recognize addresses that have accessed past protected posts and just automatically allows access?
MM, any chance I can get access to password-protected posts? I wasn’t able to see the clues =(
ragamuffin girl, yes, it seems to recognize computers that have accessed with password before… as long as the password required is the same, you will be able to see other password protected posts… but watch, after a few days, you may be prompted to put the password again…
MM, the minute I read the title of this post, I must admit to shivers down my spine…trauma from having to help my then 4th grade kiddo do a power point presentation on the Ikalahan tribe from Nueva Ecija at the Cebu International School. They were studying indigenous people and she was assigned the Ikalahans. Talked about being stumped. I am now an expert :-) on all things Ikalahan soley because all the information we could find on the tribe was way too scholarly for a 9-year old! i could have throttled her teacher.
The Ikalahans were the first tribe to get indigenous people status and their own protected lands under the Marcos regime. They have had an American missionary living amongst them for decades…it is he who helped them set up the fruit preserve business called Mountain Fresh under the auspices of the Kalahan Educational Foundation. The dagwey is actually quite good but their santol is stupendous. As is the guava. All sourced from their forests. Great stuff.
As an aside, I was offline for a couple of weeks..busy with people here from Bangkok. How does one get the password to read the posts?
Hi MM. Have you ever tried locally made mulberry jam?
Thanks MM for that insight! :-)
Was about to make the same remark as Odin a few comments up. Does anyone know if dagwey is the fruit sold in little plastic pouches, with some salt on the side, I think. I always see them when in Baguio, but I usually end up with the mango with salt on the side.