Mrs. Nita Dimayuga - the co-founder of "D'Lover's Line" bibingka in Lipa City welcomed us with open arms despite our unscheduled visit. This bibingkahan, according to a number of Filipino bibingka aficionados offers the most decadent rendition of the dessert. No one knows what the secret is - but everyone en route to Batangas seems to make a mandatory pilgrimage to D' Lover's Line.
A former OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker),
Nita reminisced about her four years in Italy, referring to it mostly as a "long distance love affair" with her husband and business partner, Nick. They first met when she was only 16 (sixteen) years old. "He fell in love with me because of my bibingka," Nita chuckles. When she returned from Italy, they pursued this
business venture – using some of the money she had earned abroad, and allowing Nick to abandon his desultory banking job to attend to this business venture. "He worked as a banker but he did not have any money," Nita chuckles again as she described the irony of his livelihood as a banker.
Established in 2000, this modest and efficiently-run "bibingkahan" modeled after a bahay kubo (Nipa hut), sits right next to the Lipa city Youth and Cultural Center. Proudly declaring that she is a 4th generation bibingka-maker, Nita claims to descend from a family that has been making bibingka for a hundred years. The name that they gave their new venture - "D Lover's" - is a tribute to Nita and Nick's family legacy, with each letter representing the first letter of the names of members
of their families. For instance, "E" is for Nita's mother, Elsa, who she said used to help make and sell bibingka 363 days of he year (except for two days - Easter and Christmas Day).
The process starts by washing Dinorado rice between 15-20 times, soaking it anywhere between 3-4 hours, and then grinding it for about 30-40 minutes. Egg, sugar, and margarine are then added to the ground rice, resulting in a huge vat of light yellow color batter that is carefully ladled into mini-palayok (clay pots) lined with banana leaves. The cooking
process is "simple," according to Nita:
Once ladled onto the palayok, she says, “let the batter cook for 5 minutes, quickly top it with sugar, and it is done once the sugar has caramelized on top. This entire process takes no more than 5 minutes.”
But what Nita does not say is that there are seven palayok all cooking at the same time and the cooking process requires a
skillful balance between putting and removing the coals on top of each palayok and ensuring that each bibingka does not cook longer than 5 minutes - any longer will result in a burnt dessert. "How do you
know when it is done?" I asked while observing Nita. "Just like this," Nita replied as she quickly maneuvered the ladling of the batter in three different palayok - while I watched coals being lifted and moved from one palayok to another, with such ease and grace - all the while attending to the heat that emanated from the coals. Nita then playfully asked me to join her at the coals. I gamely walked over to “help” her… and managed to drop batter onto the coals, burn one bibingka, and feel my face uncomfortably burning from the proximity to the heat. Nita laughed good-naturedly as I got more and more flustered, and generously said it took her years to master the multi-tasking.
"What makes your bibingka so delicious?" we asked as Nita was ladling the cooked bibingka from the palayok. Smiling broadly, she said, "Seeecret!" Perhaps the secret is not so much in the ingredients but in the love – for their collaborative vocation, for the familial legacy they are carrying on, for the pleasures of making and eating good food, and for each other - that Nita and Nick pour into their bibingka.