Eons ago when I was a little girl, Mom would buy them from walking vendors. She would cook them “estofado” like with soy sauce and star anise and brown sugar. I have never been able to replicate this delicious dish and sorry I never paid attention to how she did it.

And Josephine: my mom would do as you said, fatten poultry up before dressing them , in the days when you still bought live poultry and dressed them yourself. This I can still do with my eyes closed though I remember with horror when a helper dressing a hen lost grip and the decapitated fowl ran around for a while before sighing its last breath and “nangisay”.

We were on our way home from a family vacation last summer when I (being the driver) conveniently detoured to the said crossing for my fix of these famous fried pugo which I had been missing for years. We excitedly bought some, and it smelled incredibly yummy in the car.

Unfortunately, my folks couldn’t live up to my level of enthusiasm. They were bothered by the “jurassic” look of the tiny things as these came out of the paper bag. And worse, the birds tasted awfully malansa and incredibly tough! My little daughter politely changed the topic of banter to save me the embarrassment of having made such a big deal about the supposed delicacy.

I guess I had the misfortune of picking the wrong stall. The quail I got was probably not dressed properly, and was obviously an unsold batch that was simply reheated in hot oil. What a bummer!

I remember having adobong-pugo as a child (plain good old adobo recipe with hard-boiled quail eggs in). It was a Kapangpangan household, they love cooking that along with “lelut-tugak” (lugaw with frog), not to mention other crispy-fried bugs … never mind — just go with the first two!