My first attempt at dried flying fish or dibang, here, yielded so-so results. I had a nagging feeling that what I was attempting to re-create wasn’t just a day-old or semi-dried salted fish, but something a bit more refined. So with that thought already imbedded, I finished batch #1 and immediately moved onto a second kilo of fish… with the provincial concept in mind of “lamayo” or “labtingaw” or vinegar-marinated semi-dried fish from forays to Palawan and Visayan islands where they practice that, I wondered if the Maytahes dibang was in fact marinated in vinegar first (I would later find out from a sole blog reference to this dish that it may in fact be marinated)…

Taking off from the previous post, take the cleaned fish and dip into a marinade of coconut vinegar, salt, crushed black pepper and copious amounts of smashed garlic. I was afraid of “cooking” the fish, so only briefly washed the fish with vinegar. Some our crew looked on disapprovingly, expecting me to leave the fish in the vinegar for a while. In retrospect, I would recommend you linger while bathing the fish, more than getting wet, but not quite sitting in a bath, if you know what I mean.

The vinegar has several purposes. The first is to remove cooties or potential cooties. It also bleaches the meat of the fish, making it “whiter” or paler. It adds a hint of sourness, but this is balanced out with the salt. The garlic and pepper add flavor.

I sprinkled good local sea salt on the bathed fish. I put too much. Next time, either simply heavily salt the vinegar mixture and skip the direct salting step, or pull back on the salt, sprinkling lightly some finer natural salt instead.

Lay out in the hot sun to semi-dry. Note that the vinegar kissed fish nearest me are already paler than the previous batch of salt cured fish. Imagine if I had left it for a few more minutes in the vinegar…

…Chief of Stuff insisted on dotting each fish with lots of garlic and sprinkled on some of the marinade, afraid I was either going to kill all of us with bacteria growth or just because he is from Palawan, and holder of the key to proper lamayo… He was right, of course. :) After roughly 4 hours of drying, we put the dibang in plastic bags and froze them. I would recommend doing at least 6-7 hours (but we couldn’t as the sun turned to ominous storm clouds).

Taken out of the freezer ten days later, note the uneven bleaching of the meat. I think I could have marinated the fish for a minute or so longer.

Heat up some vegetable oil (or better yet, lard)and fry the dibang for a few minutes until cooked through and slightly golden in color.

I thought this looked pretty darned good.

But the fish we enjoyed in Batanes had an extra layer of crispness, and I wondered if they had sprinkled it with flour or cornstarch, so I gave this a try…

…et VOILA! maytahes dibang or day-old semi-dried and marinated flying fish a la Marketman (floured one on the right, above photo). Definitely an 8 or 8.5 out of 10.0 I think. I wouldn’t be embarrassed to serve this to guests any day. But to get to that 9 or 9.5 rating (will never get to the 10.0 tasted in Batanes, as location and terroir add that final 0.5 points) here’s what I would do in addition to the tips in the previous post… use bigger fish, fillet more carefully, cut off the head and tails neatly, marinate in vinegar solution for at least 1-2 minutes, and salt lightly. Dry for 6-7 hours and fry with a light coating of flour or cornstarch. Fry in hot lard. Are you salivating yet? Throw in a huge pile of homemade acharra and unlimited rice, please. Spicy vinegar a must. :)

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It happens less often now, but I have a history of eating something wonderful (and often deceptively simple) and wondering if I can replicate it at home to ensure availability. The simplest local Filipino dishes are almost always the most difficult to get just right, but it’s precisely that enigma that sets up the challenge… On a recent whirlwind trip to Batanes to shoot an episode of “Show Me the Market” on Metro Channel, I tasted maytahes or “day-old” flying fish three times in 45 hours and was utterly smitten. Flying fish was filleted and dried for a day then deep-fried, that’s all I had figured out. No one showed me how to do it, no one explained how to salt and dry it, but I nevertheless thought I should be cheeky enough to give it a go. So if you’re Ivatan and cringing at my attempt at maytahes, any advice you may have to improve this will be greatly appreciated.

At the Nasugbu market a few weeks after our Batanes trip, I spied some fresh looking flying fish, smaller* than the ones I had seen in Batanes, but I definitely wanted to try and make the dibang we had enjoyed in Batanes.

My knife skills filleting a bony fish are horrific, so before buying two kilos of flying fish, I looked up a photo of the dibang on my phone and tried to show the fishwife what I was trying to achieve and see if she was willing to fillet the fish for me. She agreed to try…

Her knife wasn’t the sharpest blade around and the filleting** was a bit ragged, but certainly better than anything I could do. She went ahead and filleted all two kilos worth and we packed it on ice for the half hour trip back home.

Back at home, I cleaned up all of the guts and any dark or bloody bits from the fish, assuming that this part would be more likely to spoil in a semi-dried state.

Next, I be-headed the fish…

…with a cleaver in a clean straight cut.***

Next, I decided to just simply salt the filleted flying fish. I used some good rock salt from the local salt beds near the Wawa port area, but I noticed the granules of salt were quite big.****

I had no idea how much salt to put so I guessed, and probably overdid it.*****

Next, I laid the fish out to dry, over a plastic net over a hot stone paved driveway. It was a searingly hot cloudless morning, and I could barely stand barefoot on the stones. I wondered if I might inadvertently cook the fish, but I went ahead anyway, hoping there was enough solar power and sea breezes to do this right. I know, I know, you are thinking bugs and flies right? I covered everything with a finer screen, even though they don’t do that in the provinces… And just in case you were curious, hot pavement of black rocks can rise to 145F or so, about 15F short of being hot enough to cook an egg. The soles of my feet can handle up to about 130-135F I suspect… :)

The morning of searing sun quickly turned dark and ominous some 4 hours later, so rather than 6-8 hours of drying, we took the fish away and packed them individually and froze them. This was version #1. Just salted, and semi-dried.******

While the fish looked and smelled fine after its partial drying (I was pretty sure I wouldn’t poison myself), it certainly DIDN’T look like the lighter, meatier day-old flying fish I had brought back from Batanes…

…which made me wonder if I was doing this right. Thankfully, I had also tried another version (next post).

The next morning, we fried up the first attempt at maytahes/dibang or day-old flying fish and that’s the photo all the way up top. It looked a bit ragged, but it tasted pretty good, but it was way too salty. I would have rated it a 6/10.0 compared to the beautiful dibang from Batanes, above. But here are some tips if you want to do it yourself, and it should yield a 8 or 9 out of 10, assuming you just want a salted flying fish recipe…

*find really large flying fish, say 300-400 grams a piece, if you can. These ones were some 230-250 grams each, and were a tad small.
**use a really sharp thin fillet knife and cut close to the bone cleanly without “sawing” your knife back and forth that makes the meat ragged.
***a straight cut with a cleaver isn’t the best choice. Use a sharp knife to cut out all of the head and any dark bits, but mimic the close up of the Batanes sourced fish that looks like it was trimmed in a “V” cut. Also, I would remove the tail as well.
****Use non-iodized salt like I did, but unlike me, it’s best to crush the salt into a finer consistency so you don’t risk over salting the fish. Better yet, rinse with sea water rather than fresh water before salting.
*****salt with a light hand. I know you think the fish will spoil in the hot sun, but trust that the solar rays and light salt will control the rot nicely… :) TRUST.
******I was beginning to think there were other ingredients involved, and took a guess and tried another version, up next.

Photo #3 was taken by P.O. Thanks!

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We were at the beach last week, with a very good old friend (and his family) from high school that hadn’t been back to Manila in 36 years since we graduated from high school. He tagged along to the Nassau market and surprisingly for a Tuesday morning, we found tons of things to cook for lunch that day. One of the unusual items was this giant squid or “lumot” that I have avoided in the past as I always thought it might be tougher and chewier than I would like. But my “suki” or market vendor convinced me to give it a try.

Weigh up a 1.3 kilo specimen, so fresh it was sticky with mucous.

My suki suggested the squid be skinned to ensure tenderness, so she made short shrift of skinning it (there was a part of me that wondered if it might still be alive!)…

…which took her less than a minute to do…

…and gutted and cleaned the squid as well.

Back at home, rinse the squid to ensure any remaining bits and bobs are removed. Then carefully cut and “score” the skin in a diamond pattern to help prevent curling. Use a sharp knife and cut only part of the way through the squid.

Next, add a marinade made up of soy sauce (I used kikkoman), kalamansi, a touch of vinegar, salt, pepper, homemade tamarind puree and chopped chilies. Let this marinate for an hour or so. Several readers have mentioned on IG that marinating the lumot in milk for a couple of hours helps to tenderize it as well… will have to give that a try sometime soon.

Grill over a medium high heat and note that some squid still curled, as I probably scored it on the “wrong side” (it should be inside the squid rather than outside) and baste with remaining marinade. Cook until just done, this took less than 5 minutes total.

The squid was surprisingly tender, though it had just a bit of chew, but that was a pleasant chew. Do not overcook the squid, it needs just a brush with the fire until opaque and just cooked. This was easy and supremely easy to make if your market vendor is kind enough to clean and skin it for you.

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The house is awash with tamarind puree. That’s what happens when something seasonal hits its peak and I get so excited to have the ingredient, that I stock up as though next year would never come… So while at the office in Manila the other day, our Caviteña accountant asked if I had ever tried pinangat na bangus made with ripe but sour tamarind. I hadn’t, and based on her quick description, I headed to the kitchen as soon as I got home and tried to make the dish on my own without a recipe. It isn’t as authentic as it could be (probably doesn’t have young garlic and would be better made in a palayok) but this turned out BRILLIANTLY for the minimal amount of effort required. I bet 90% of marketmanila readers could do this and the flavors would be so familiar for them to wonder why they had never cooked or tasted it before. Think a variation of paksiw na isda, but with a far more sophisticated sour than bottled (and in most households, horrific tasting) vinegar used for most paksiw. This is humble home cooking, but just a few tweaks would definitely elevate this dish to restaurant worthy special.

You will need either whole de-boned bangus, sliced into steaks, or if you are simply reaching into your freezer for the easiest option, then bangus bellies like I have here. You will need a big handful of fresh ripe sour and peeled local sampalok. I happened to have sweetened sampalok puree so I was determined to use this. Salt. Some folks use ginger, onions, garlic. But I am told others eschew the use of the last three and rely purely on the salt and tamarind to work their magic. I thought a touch of homemade lard couldn’t hurt, and our accountant suggested a touch of soy sauce near the end for both color and flavor, just as the dish was “drying out” as they preferred it served closer to a dry consistency than saucy.

First, make a light broth from the tamarind, water and salt. Strain this through a sieve. Into a pan, add the bangus segments, the tamarind water, some tamarind puree if you have it (or more concentrated tamarind water and a touch of brown sugar), salt, pepper and young garlic. That’s what I did. Alternatively you could melt lard, saute the ginger and onions and garlic, lay the fish on top, add the tamarind broth and continue cooking. I added the lard last as I nearly forgot to put it.

Cover and let this come to a boil and simmer for say 15-20 minutes or so. Apparently the goal is to get the fish to absorb all that sour goodness without it disintegrating, so don’t move the fish around too much. Also, some folks like this drier and that’s what my goal was as well. Notice how the water, tamarind and lard guile into an almost emulsified sauce that coats the bangus pieces, I really liked that effect.

Halfway through cooking, I was worried that the flavor might not permeate all the fish, so I carefully flipped them over. In retrospect, you might start off this way and flip them the other way around so the skin crisps up a bit in the minimal fat in the pan when you are nearly done cooking. Add some soy sauce and season with salt to get the right level of saltiness to your liking nearing the end of cooking. I pulled this off the heat just as most of the liquid had evaporated. Think of this as a variation on paksiw, or acid braised fish, so essential in the times with no refrigeration and it could sit out for hours without spoiling.

The result? For minimal effort and no reference point? Was nothing short of WOW, just WOW! And there are so many ways to enhance this, refry it, serve it saucy, etc. Totally instant comfort food. So worth trying. And so seasonal if you are using fresh tamarind…

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Rarely have I tried to replicate something I have never ever cooked before and end up with results this good, the first time around. So the inspiration was the legendary lines and forced rationing of salted egg fish skins by a purveyor in the lobby of SM Megamall. The things people did to get their cravings satisfied. So when one of our managers from Cebu had someone line up before the stall even opened (the advantages of having earlier access for employees) I knew I had to check this product out. I must state categorically that I am not really a huge fan of salted egg dishes, and missed most of the current trend to have it on everything under the sun like potato chips, so I was not the fawning fan of anything salted egg… but when we finally opened a PHP600 large bag of the legendary Singaporean fish skins, I must admit I was intrigued enough to give it a very objective taste, meaning, without wanting not to like it. It was pretty good, and I can see how some folks would really like it, but it wasn’t going to take over my personal preference for say, Doritos or Salt and Vinegar potato chips, but that’s just me. The story could have ended there. But everyone else seemed to think I was a strange bird for not jumping on the salted egg bandwagon.

But as usual on this blog, there is a back story to all this. A few months ago, shortly after we opened Zubuchon in Manila, an old friend and avid blog reader from a decade back, Marla, handed me a bag with a weighty present inside, she was kind of sheepishly amused how I would react to a commercial, foil-wrapped bag of Knorr salted egg powder… I noticed it was MSG-free (yay!) and I promised to put it to good use at some point. One thing led to another and it ended up in an office cabinet for a few months, untouched.

I had tried cooking salted egg based dishes before (see here, inspired by another long-time reader, Millet of Davao), using real salted eggs, but now I know exactly why this trend was expanding at a rapid pace, because the key ingredient was now so conveniently and readily available. Unilever and Knorr are brilliant in many ways, my only wish is that they make sinigang mix and other local mixes with an option that is MSG-free, like they do with chicken cubes elsewhere in Asia… So thanks Marla, this experiment is thanks in part to your key “secret” ingredient… :)

But the other part of the story is that local, artisanal dried fish skins are something we have in stock at Zubuchon. We serve a dish that pairs fried fish skins with kinilaw, and it has since been copied by many other restaurants in Cebu and elsewhere. So besides the salted egg powder, we had the fish skins. And as luck would have it, I have a small curry leaf tree growing out in the yard, so all I needed was some margarine and chilies. I couldn’t get myself to use margarine, just couldn’t, and opted for canned Queensland butter instead. Though perhaps I should have stuck to the margarine called for in most recipes on the internet.

Into a pot I put some butter, chilies, fresh curry leaves and brought this to a simmer and added several tablespoons of the salted egg powder.

I eyeballed it at this point, and if anything, I could have added even more salted egg powder as my sauce was kinda thin. I added two teaspoons of sugar for a touch of sweetness as well.

Meanwhile, fry up the fish skins and take care NOT to over-fry them, which is a just a split second longer than you think. It is critical they are slightly under- rather than over-done as they get another round in the oven to dry the sauce out. Notice the skins in the back, they were overcooked and bordering on evil. :( Salt the freshly fried fish skins as soon as they emerge from the fat. If you use lard, you will be on my short-list of FWAFOL’s (Friends Who Are Fond of Lard). Hahaha.

Take your previously made sauce and sprinkle liberally over the fried fish skins and sprinkle some salted egg powder over everything. I did this on both sides of the fish crackers, which was a bit exagge, but more is better in this case, I think.

Stick this all into a low heat oven say 230-250F for 15 or so minutes until the sauce dries out a bit. Dry on paper towels to mop up excess oil and enjoy. They were delicious! But delicious! And relatively oh so easy to make, albeit with a few hard to find ingredients. I am thinking of offering a variant which would include fried fish skins with the butter and salted egg sauce on the side to dip into… Experiment was a total success! :)

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I never know the difference. As far as I can tell, blue marlin and swordfish are both billfish, with that distinctive long “sword” jutting out front (it has a bone and I wouldn’t want to get in its way). In Bohol and other Visayan areas it is referred to as malasugui, and when freshly caught, it makes the most amazing kinilaw. My favorite fish for kinilaw in fact, closely followed by a reef fresh tanguigue.

At any rate, this wonderful blue marlin steak was from the Baclaran seaside market, probably a couple of days after it was caught, frozen and then thawed. It still tasted wonderful. Just seasoned with salt and pepper and pan grilled on a hot cast iron pan with ridges. It was cut a little thinner than I would like (1 inch thickness or a bit more is ideal) but it remained moist and succulent after cooking. We served it with a simple lemon butter sauce with some chopped Italian parsely for a simple but delicious dinner. Serve with an orzo salad or even couscous on the side…

I always have just a slight tinge of guilt when eating beautiful wild animals (but I do it anyway, think lapu-lapu, snipes, clams) but watch this video to see what an angry marlin can do to you if you piss it off. Revenge of the marlin, is comforting in a bizarre kind of way…

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Most folks recoil at the thought of ordering a plate of octopus tentacles to enjoy with their ice cold beer or a glass of white wine. But if you had a taste of this latest unplanned octopus experiment, I am almost certain that 98+% of you would have liked this dish. I was at the Carbon market in Cebu earlier today and spied some beautiful small octopus on offer at PHP120 a kilo. I bought just one kilo (should have gotten 5 kilos!) with no ideas at the time. They were roughly 10 inches in total length, from head to tentacle tip. They were babies. Or octo-toddlers.

Back at the office kitchen, I added them to a pot, place them over low-medium heat with a cover on, and let them cook in their own juices. After some 30-35 minutes, they were tender as a baby’s bottom. Drain the liquid away, cut off the heads and innards and prepare a wok with vegetable oil about 2 inches deep over high heat. I quickly marinated the octopus tentacles in the juice of two kalamansis and say a tablespoon of kikkoman and sprinkled on some salt and pepper. These were then deep fried for about 3-4 minutes, just long enough to crisp the ends of the tentacles and skin surfaces, but the meat was still very tender. Drained and served hot, they were SPECTACULARLY good. Tasty, crispy, chewy and totally addictive. Every single person in the office (and most don’t eat octopus except when I cook it) loved it and the platter was wiped out in seconds! If I can manage to secure a steady supply of the baby octopus, this dish is hopefully going to make it onto the menu in the future…

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I love to find fresher, lighter preparations for some locally available vegetables, a refusal to believe that we just don’t have that many vegetable-based dishes in our repertoire in the Philippines. Recent data suggests that as a nation, we consume a phenomenal amount of meat, and that’s odd given the region’s seeming love affair with not only delicious, but economical and healthy vegetables and herbs. I am a carnivore, and couldn’t be otherwise, but I do love my vegetables and salads. This one experiment, a variation on this thai dish, is different enough, delicious enough and unique enough for me to cheekily add “a la Marketman” to it’s name.

Start with beautifully fresh sigarilyas or sigadilyas (winged beans) and cut them to small pieces and blanche in boiling water for a minute or less and shock in ice water to stop the cooking process and retain that vivid green color. Steam or blanche some shrimp until just cooked and peel and devein if necessary. Make a dressing by adding fish sauce, fresh lime juice (dayap), some sambal (not too much) a touch of homemade tamarind puree, a touch of brown sugar and mix until dissolved. Toss the vegetables and shrimp with the dressing, and add a couple of tablespoons of coconut cream just to mute and balance out the flavors. Taste and adjust as you desire. At the last minutes, I spied the preserved limes in the fridge so I added a scant 1/4 teaspoon full of finely minced lime rind (no pulp) to the dressing.

Chill for a few minutes in the fridge as the flavor meld together. Serve slightly cool. I added some purple basil for color but they were irrelevant. This salad was FANTASTIC. The little bits of powerful flavor from the preserved limes really provided an unusual punch. The whole thing just worked really nicely. Mrs. MM and I nearly finished this entire salad, and it was quite large. We left some on purpose so the crew could taste it and replicate it for future meals. It’s not really a filipino dish, but who cares, it tasted wonderful. Any reason to use more veggies and get us all eating them is a good one, as far as I am concerned.

Old post on sigadilyas, here. And here’s an interesting take on “Bicol Express” with sigadilyas.

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We have been entertaining house guests for the last few days who have been family friends for over 50 years. For one of them, it’s been nearly 50 years since her last visit to Manila. In the 1960’s, my father was close to several of the American families assigned to Manila at the American Embassy, aid agencies, and other similar postings. My older siblings in particular have remained close to children of these expat families, and over the years we have kept in touch with some of them. It’s our pleasure to be their host for a few days down memory lane (in many cases, buildings, streets and structures they recall no longer exist). We took our guests to the beach overnight, and this is one of the things we fed them for lunch. It was a hit.

I am not fond of many examples of rellenong bangus or stuffed bangus that turn our dry and tasteless. I have done some myself, here and here and here, to pretty good results. But honestly, the extraction of meat, retention of whole skin, re-stuffing, shown in detail here and here, etc. is a bit of a pain. So this time around, I asked the same lady who prepared this fish the last time to just splay open a medium sized bangus, de-bone it (say 85% of the bones that is) and leave the head on so I could experiment with it.

Into a saute pan I added some vegetable oil, then minced ginger, garlic, onions and sliced finger chilies. I let that saute for a while, then added chopped red bell pepper and lots of chopped fresh tomatoes. After some of the liquid had evaporated, I added a bit of patis or fish sauce, some kikkoman, salt and pepper. This was a nice moist flavorful filling. And lots of it (who likes a fish scrimpily stuffed?)…

Season the bangus meat with salt and pepper, then add in the stuffing, close this all up and tie it with some butchers twine. We used abaca twine, but forgot to soak it. Ideally, you need to soak it. :) Drizzle some vegetable oil over the skin of the fish.

Cover with banana leaves that have been previously heated to make it more malleable, then tie again with twine. Place over a hot fire. And wait for the sizzling sounds from within. If your fire is just right “not burn your eyebrows off hot”, nor “I can keep my hand over the flames for 5 seconds cool” either then one side should take just 5 minutes of so for a medium sized fish. Carefully, repeat carefully flip it over once and cook another 5 minutes or just under that and hope it is just perfectly cooked. We erred on 2 minutes overcooked, so I have adjusted times on this post to reflect what I think would be ideal at this point.

Despite the rather dry twine, we didn’t spring a leak and that is the ideal situation. All the moisture remains in the banana blanket and all of the flavor is intact as well.

The results? Fantastic for a first try. Meat was a tad overdone but the stuffing was delicious. And if you judiciously spread the stuffing to each forkful of meat, it is a delicious match indeed. This is a much easier version compared with a real rellenong bangus, but the results were just as good, if not better, in my opinion. :)

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Carefully place the block of Himalayan pink salt on a “flame diffuser” so that the flames from your stovetop burner aren’t hitting the salt directly. Turn your flame up to medium for about 20 minutes, and then high until the block of salt is nice and hot (a recommended 400-500F hot, but there’s no easy way of checking how hot it actually is). I had the heat on for a good 40 minutes which seemed like enough time, but in retrospect, I think this would have been better done in an oven.

I peeled nice fresh prawns and laid them directly on the slab of salt. they cooked in just a minute or two per side. It was obvious to me that the block wasn’t quite hot enough and I let it heat up for another 10 minutes. Next, I tried thin slices of hanger steak, a tough cut, precisely because of the legendary tenderizing abilities of salt blocks… then finally, I tried a thin fillet of lap-lapu, which of all the items cooked, was a bit of a disaster, as the skin stuck well and truly to the salt and a flip over was a messy and ugly proposition.

In the end, we ended up with succulent and just brine-y enough prawns, beautiful slices of tender steak, and a salty and crumbly fillet of fish. It was interesting and all, but I am not sure we would be doing this regularly unless I find a better way to make use of the block. Other suggestions include a cold sashimi serving platter, which sounds interesting enough, so maybe I will scrape this block and re-use it in cold format the next time around. I am sure many of you are thinking, wasn’t the food really salty? No, it surprisingly was not overly salty.

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