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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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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We eat a lot of hummus in our household. And I have made hummus with lots of different things mixed in like roasted red peppers, beets, coriander, etc. We have also tried white bean and other versions, but never really thought about mung beans or monggo. I was trying to think of healthier ways to eat classic pinoy dishes and decided to experiment with a monggo or mung bean hummus. A quick google yielded a couple of distinctly western takes on the spread, so I wasn’t being too bizarre. But I didn’t really follow a specific recipe and just boiled up some green mung beans until cooked, but not overly mushy. Into a food processor, I added the mung beans, tahini, salt, pepper, water, some garlic and blitzed that for a minute or two. You really have to whip it up to lighten it, and you need quite a bit of liquid. The results were surprisingly good, if a bit bland for my taste. Maybe if I used a really flavorful vegetable broth instead of water… I was also planning to make a tinapa or smoked bangus dip, but my “aha!” moment was to ditch the tinapa spread, and put flaked smoked fish into the monggo hummus instead. This worked wonderfully. The familiar flavor and a creamy texture of mung bean and the sharp salty hints of smoke and savoriness from the fish. Now I am wondering if I should have used coconut milk somehow as well. At any rate, garnished with more tinapa or smoked fish, some chopped chives and a healthy swoosh of good olive oil and it was a slam-dunk hit at dinner with Canadian friends, who lapped it up.

Still of the pinoy theme but presented a different way, I decided to make a simple tomato salsa to serve with the monggo and tinapa spread. Some dayap from our garden in Cebu, seasonings, olive oil and a bit of red wine vinegar. I didn’t use cilantro or wansoy as I knew one of the guests had an aversion to it. But wansoy would have been better than chopped green onions. This salsa was nothing unusual, but its presentation alongside the other spread was giving me serious pinoy meal vibes, but in a chilled appetizer guise. Had we put finely chopped salted red egg, this would have really been cool and reminiscent of hundreds of similar such meals I would have enjoyed growing up.

We served these dips/salsas with slices of toasted pita bread and everything was consumed in a flash. Even our cook, who sometimes raises her eyebrows at my wacky experiments, said the spread was delicious. If I play with this a bit more, I would have an appetizer dish for the restaurant even… think base of vegetarian monggo hummus, which could be varied with tinapa or even tuyo, or topped with lots of crushed chicharon, or deep-fried lechon flakes or served with other vegetarian salsas and dips. It would be pinoy style ingredients and preparations at heart, but presented in a different way. :)

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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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We had houseguests for the last few days, who had once lived in Manila some 50+ years ago, and were returning on a nostalgic trip to visit their old homes, school and other places. After a several full days of sightseeing, the early evenings were always a time to decompress, relax and succumb to trans-pacific jet lag. I sometimes struggle with pica-pica’s to offer at the cocktail hour, that are both local yet familiar. This one is always a slam dunk. It’s so incredibly easy to do, it is local in flavor yet very much familiar to anyone who is used to smoked fish such as kippers or such, so it has broad appeal.

To make, fry up a whole medium sized tinapang bangus and flake the meat, you will end up with roughly 1.5 cups worth or so. Place that into a food processor. Add 1.5-2.0 bricks of cream cheese, some light cream (or yoghurt) to loosen things up, some chopped green onions, salt, pepper, a few dashes of worcestershire sauce and tabasco and a final spritz of fresh dayap juice (or kalamansi or lemon will do). Blitz this until well blended and serve with some toast points, bagel chips, etc. Delicious. I find that it’s terrific in hot pan de sal as well. If you store this in the fridge, make sure to take it out 30-40 minutes before you serve it so it warms up a bit and is easier to spread. Garnish with chives or green onions if you like.

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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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One of the most memorable dishes we enjoyed on our trip to Portugal last year was this gorgeous arroz de mariscos (dotted with piri-piri sauce), at a seaside restaurant in the town of Cascais. We were hungry, the view was phenomenal, and the dish was just brilliant. I would never have guessed that a relatively simple sounding soupy rice dish (though redolent with the best of catch of the sea when it arrived at our table) would figure as one of my all-time trip favorites.

While we only ordered a serving “good for 2”, the three of us had a hard time finishing 80% of the generous serving. And I noted that it arrived looking almost as though it were a thick soup, or a stew. This was definitely not paella, definitely not risotto, and yet had the best of both of those other dishes in it…

I had looked up various recipes, none of which would seem to yield what I was looking for, and in fact my first attempt at the dish was a bust. So this time around, I decided to just go with my instincts. First, I made two broths… one with bisugo (red mullet) and aromatics for a flavorful fish broth. Next, I made a shrimp broth. But not just shells thrown into a pot of water and boiled. Here, I sautéed shrimp shells and heads in some butter, then deglazed the pot with some white wine and after the alcohol had burned off, added water to make one of the best looking and tasting shrimp broths I have made in recent memory. I used a chinois (no, that’s not a person, silly) to strain the solids out. The broth/s are ESSENTIAL to this dish, and if you don’t make them from scratch or with great care, I think you are making a mistake. I suspect for the restaurant’s version, they had a nice mixed seafood/shellfish broth from all the trimmings in the kitchen.

So into a large enameled pot I added olive oil and sautéed some chopped onions and some garlic. I added some of my sofritto for my basic paella and some saffron (I am pretty sure the original dish didn’t have saffron so you can skip this) as well. Then 2.5x the amount of water as the rice (7.5 cups for 3.0 cups of rice for example) and let this come to a boil. I then added arborio rice and swished it around every once in a while. Watch the absorption of broth and be prepared to add up to a cup or so more broth. When it’s about 15 minutes into the cooking, add the seafood (use LOTS to approximate the dish up top) and continue until the rice is cooked but the dish is still slightly soupy. Season all along with salt (lots) and pepper if you desire. This version was rich and delicious and almost heady with seafood essence from the broth to the actual seafood. In fact, I may have gone a bit OTT, and could pull back next time, as sometimes, just sometimes, too much is too much. :)

Another favorite from that Portugal trip were these amazingly bright red (prior to cooking and also after cooking) shrimp/prawns that were done so simply with just olive oil and garlic.

They were wickedly overpriced, but since I doubt we will ever return to this particular area more than once or twice for the rest of our lives, we ordered them anyway. And they were worth every euro. :)

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Seafood Sunday seems like a good idea. It’s market day if you happen to be by the seashore (or even if you are not), it’s time to enjoy a long meal at the lunch table with family and friends, and it happens to be Lent just in case that affects your dietary choices.

Hit the local markets and stock up on whatever looks fresh… young squid, fresh fish, prawns, shrimp, etc.

Marinate seafood briefly in soy, kalamansi, dalandan, olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper, whatever you like and throw it all on the grill. Here some baby squid cooked just right (not overcooked), some shrimp with leftover Iloilo made prosciutto wrapped around it (it was delicious, but you can leave out the meat if you desire)…

…some prawns and some small talakitok or jacks grilled whole.

An eggplant and tomato salad for that texture and acidic contrast to the incredibly fresh, slightly briny seafood. And yes, somewhere off camera is a nice big bowl of steamed rice. In this case, no utensils required. But Mrs. MM had a fork and knife. :)

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I always thought these were called pufferfish. But a quick google yielded MY (I forgot I wrote it) old post on these rather huge porcupine fish corrected that impression. Also referred to locally as tagutungan, I saw this man “skinning” these baby specimens of the porcupine fish, so they would be more palatable to buyers who didn’t want to hassle with skinning them.

When asked if he knew how to remove the poisonous part he just shrugged and said these ones weren’t poisonous. Yeah, right. Cebu newspapers are rife with articles every year about folks who eat porcupine fish and poison themselves. But locals say if it’s cooked well, you won’t get woozy. Yet another comforting view. At any rate, the process to skin the fish was cumbersome and I just stood there marveling at his patience and ability to avoid the sharp spines.

He took the skin off in its entirety, and the naked porcupine fish returned to the tile for folks to pick and purchase.

I must say the skinned fish with eyeballs intact look rather freakishly weird.

We have never eaten porcupine fish in the Philippines, but I once was treated to a very formal and extremely expensive business lunch in Korea where they served it and frankly, at the time, it didn’t really seem very special to me at all — just a bit of white fish meat. And to risk death or serious poisoning?, no thanks, I’ll pass on that.

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