Kalamias: Medicinal Herb and Main Ingredient for Claypot Tambakol, Tulingan or Tawilis

There’s a very old kamias tree that grows in our backyard.  

Last year, a businessman asked me to try out his new product that was still on R&D - liquefied kamias and coconut oil cleaning fluid.  He gave me a a few liters of it and I used it to clean kitchen tile and wash dishes with.  It had a clean scent and would bubble and clean just like my biodegradable dishwashing liquid so I gave him the thumbs up and wished him luck on his agri-business.  

Traditionally the leaves, after being boiled and reduced to paste, were applied to affected areas for skin diseases like acne and other skin diseases involving pruritis or skin eruptions.  The boiled leaves paste is also said to be effective for localized rheumatism.

I made some paste to apply to an irritatingly itchy dust mite infection and comparing the effect of over the counter permethrin and boiled kamias leaves paste, the relieving effects of the latter are more immediate. 

An infusion of its flowers at 40 grams to a pint of boiling water and drank as 4 glasses of tea daily is a well-known folk medicine cure for cough and thrush.

But what we really treasure that old tree for is Tambakol steamed in a slow fire for two hours using the juices of 20 large kamias fruits in a black claypot.

The implements and ingredients are: one black claypot that holds a kilo and a half or 6-8 medium size yellow-fin tuna or “tambakol”; 15-20 freshly picked kamias fruit sliced to halves; rock salt; pepper; porkfat and your sourest vinegar. 

To ensure that the kamias, vinegar, porkfat, pepper and salt flavor permeates the thick meat of the tambakol, make diagonal cuts on both sides of each fish and press the tambakol with the palm of your hand against the kitchen counter until it flattens into just an inch in thickness with the fish’ torso breaking up at the diagonal cuts.

Line the bottom of your black claypot with the sliced halves of kamias and layer in the salt and peppered Tambakol atop the kamias.  Pour in about a fourth of a cup of extra sour vinegar and line the fish with a few strips of salted pork fat. Top off with more sliced halves of kamias and put the claypot in low open flame for a couple of hours until the juices of the kamias steamcooks the tambakol.  

After its cooked, set it aside for two days inside the pot and the flavors will be just right on the third day.  The “sinaing” or steamed tambakol is also delicious when fried crispy for breakfast.

This recipe works even better for Tulingan (Skipjack Tuna or Mackerel Tuna) but you have to remember to pull the tailfins out to get the attached poison sac on each fish or else you may end up hospitalized from ingesting the potent poison.  And don’t forget to flatten the tulingan with your palms or else the juices wont be absorbed by the thick, dark, red meat of the fish.

This claypot cooking is a favorite of Batangenyos and during the Japanese occupation, my mother’s family would have claypots of Kalamias-flavored Tambakol, Tulingan and Tawilis, the sardine that abounds in Taal lake, as their equivalent of “fastfood” because once cooked it’s good for a week in the claypot where their flavors just get better as the days pass.

If you want to plant the tree make sure it’s in a spot where it gets a lot of sunlight so it will flower and bear more fruit.  

In Bicolano, it’s called “Kiling-iba”; in Ilocano it’s “Pias”; in Tagalog it’s called “Kalamias” or “Kamias” and in Visayan it’s known as “Kalingiwa”. 

It has a very strong, sour, acidic taste when eaten fresh; has a high content of Vitamin C and Vitamin B1 or thyamine hence its fruits’ uses for cough complaints, beriberi (vitamin B1 deficiency) and scurvy (vitamin C deficiency).

Along with the Malunggay and Papaya trees, its a treasure trove in anyone’s backyard.