The first time I cleaned a freshly caught fish, I probably contemplated the task for several minutes to help steel myself for the task. It’s not one of my favorite things to do honestly… And this old post on young women in Northern Cebu cleaning danggit for daing or dried fish still amazes me for the sheer speed with which they did their work and the meager sums they were paid to do it. So I watched with fascination as this fishwife on Bantayan island made quick work of gutting some medium sized danggit, prepping them for deep-frying.
The wishwife makes a 3 inch slit on the side of the stomach of the fish, with a very sharp knife, apparently not really hitting the innards.
She reaches into the cavity with two fingers and grabs holds of the entrails. Note that these are wickedly pungentious entrails. Wicked.
She just kept ripping out entrails making quick work of small pile of fish in front of her. Forget ever thinking about an eew factor. This is something she does several times a day.
Notice that she manages to maintain her coat of light pink nail polish…
Oh, and she chats with her customer(s) while all of this is going on. Finally, a basket filled with gutted danggit. Sale done.
4 Responses
I don’t like gutting fish, either. The first time I had to was in Biology class, after dissection.
Eeeewww indeed!
Deep fried fresh danggit is one of my favorites but cleaning this fish is a pain. The stench of danggit entrails is horrible and their spines are razor sharp.
Home Ec prepared us for fish-gutting, stench, spines and all.. I feel like a surgeon doing this. No eeww at all.
I buy silver biddies, gut, butterfly and/or de-bone, brine for 2 days and fry it for breakfast like dried danggit. Fishmongers here gut only big expensive fish, small ones like silver biddies are not worth the trouble. Usually, they don’t do a good job of it and burst the gallbladder and make the fish bitter with bile. I often have to clean it again so I’d rather do it myself. They also throw out the roe. The only downside to cleaning my own fish is wearing the scales afterwards.