Today, we have a guest article from Claro La Verdad. Claro is a regular commenter here on LiP, using the name “Biz Doc” when he comments. Welcome to the site, Claro, and thank you for your contribution. MindanaoBob
As expats-in-residence, most of you remember your first brush with something so unpleasantly alien in your own home here in the Philippines that primal defensive instincts kicked in at once, telling you to never bring yourself into contact with it ever again.
It comes in many colors, shapes and sizes, but one thing about it takes you right to the very edge of sanity : that terrible, incomprehensible stink that makes you wonder whether some thing just died in the house, got dragged out in the mid-day sun for an extensive autopsy, and then brought back indoors to be memorialized in a deep pan of hot oil— right in your kitchen.
Someone in the house— if not your very own Pinoy spouse— invariably tells you to relax, catch your breath, and sit down at the kitchen table. Surely not to eat the source of that unbearable smell, you wonder aloud, and the calm reply goes, Oh yes dear, how did you know?
That surreal nightmare pretty much sums up your excruciating initiation into the dried, salted world of Bulad, Tamban, Daing or Tuyo, that strange, fishy class of Filipino comfort food that few expats dare to eat, let alone relish on a daily basis.
Like any well-adjusted Pinoy I too underwent that momentary trauma way back, in early, early childhood.
I remember having to sit on a high chair, with everyone seated around the kitchen table freely taking whatever they wished to eat with their own plate, spoon & fork. What I ate every meal time on the other hand was not of my own choosing. A bowl and a teaspoon was assigned to me, yet I didn’t even have the freedom to touch them myself since someone else did that while feeding me. Most of the time, what I ate didn’t taste interesting at all. Some rice in my plastic bowl swimming in some sort of bland, lukewarm soup with mushy vegetables was probably all I could digest, after all I didn’t yet have molar teeth to chew food with.
Yet I still remember looking forward to every meal when everybody got caught up doing their own thing at the table, amid the din and the chatter and the action happening up close, which more than made up for the same old tasteless, watery fare I got meal after meal, day after day.
Like everything in life, that soon changed. The day finally came when I could join everyone at the table, free to take whatever I wanted to eat, for as much as I wanted, for as long as I had the teeth for whatever was set on the table. I finally had my own place setting with a little plate, teaspoon and mini-fork with a plastic grip, but my clump of rice was still swimming in soup, probably to remind me that I wasn’t big enough yet to deserve my own little soup bowl to dip my spoon into. Yet I kept pining for the day when I could finally savor the flavor of each dish, without the taste of the soup of the day interfering with every teaspoonful of rice.
And so with every passing meal came the opportunity to explore the flavors that every new dish offered. The tasteless soup that used to flood my rice bowl in earlier times turned out to be quite flavorful and diverse. My mom cooked everything herself and tied as I was to her apron strings every now and then to keep me out of trouble, I saw how fresh shrimps or fish or chicken or pork or beef or shellfish would go into the pot with water in it, boiling into soup stock for as long as it took with matching spices & condiments, ginger, tamarind, lemongrass, chives, garlic, peppercorns or onions and salt, and then chopped vegetables added to the mix. Flavorful soup accompanied every lunchtime meal rain or shine, and with it came a vegetable dish or a salad, a main dish of fried, grilled or stewed meat or fish, and all-you-can-eat rice.
An occasional dessert would appear on the table every time my mom had the free time & spare ingredients to prepare something sweet : home-churned vanilla ice cream during summer, mango jam or sliced sweet mangoes after the season’s harvest, ube jam whenever carabao (water buffalo) milk was plentiful at the market, yema or leche flan from spare egg yolk and milk when a cake that needed frosting only called for some egg whites that got beaten stiff with powdered sugar.
All these wonderful flavors pretty soon got predictable, so eventually I learned to do what the rest of the family did when meal time got boring : fixing up a personalized dipping sauce for the main meat or fish dish by mixing up some vinegar, soy sauce or fish sauce with crushed garlic, diced onions or powdered peppercorns— or crushed chili pepper if mere spiciness wasn’t hot enough to make the throat burn.
Smell for Sale!
At this point you’d probably be salivating at the thought of making different dipping sauces fit for every fish or meat dish that showed up on the dining table since the day you decided to stay. Yet you’d also be wondering what happened to that stink that got you out of the kitchen, swearing you’d never touch bulad, tamban, daing, tuyo ever again, or whatever salted dried fish or squid your charming Pinoy spouse fried or grilled for you, which was supposed to be the scope of this piece (it still is).
Like I mentioned earlier, I too underwent that momentary trauma of having to eat bulad or tamban (tuyo in tagalog) for breakfast, without recourse to anything better to eat at the crack of dawn. Breakfast was typically either pan de sal from the bakery paired with palaman (‘filler’ in tagalog), which could be fruit jam, scrambled eggs or omelet, fried hotdogs or breakfast ham with the morning glass of chocolate malt, or the same viands paired with glorious, oh-what-a-beautiful-morning fried rice sautee’d with garlic and salt, prepared every time the previous night’s cooked rice was sufficient enough to cover the next morning’s breakfast as well.
Whenever my mom felt somewhat nostalgic, she’d turn the fragrant, garlic-infused fried rice into morisqueta by adding scrambled eggs as well as chopped onion shoots, a couple of spoons of soy sauce, chinese or spanish chorizo, green peas, finely-diced onions and carrots to the mix, essentially making a very tasty, filling meal unto itself. But that took more time to prepare, so more often than not the speedy alternative would be to cook up some garlic fried rice, eggs fried sunny side up, tomatoes diced and salted, and the inevitable bulad, the butterfly-cut, palm-sized, salted dried fish that was fried yet still somewhat chewy to the bite, or the bitter, salty fried tamban, finger-sized whole fish of some unrecognizable specie that you were supposed to eat entire, tiny bones, scales, heads, tails, digestive organs and all. Oh, the horror!
As a kid I dreaded eating tamban as it was considerably less filling than the usual breakfast viands, making me hungry in school halfway through morning class which i had to bear until before noon, when i’d finally be fetched for a heavy lunch at home. So I had to use whatever leeway the entire kitchen offered me to deal with the dilemma. I came up with a very simple solution by mimicking what everyone else was doing : crushing some garlic in a saucer of vinegar.
Eating tamban or bulad at breakfast became a ritual for me. As soon as the smell of it frying wafted throughout the house at dawn, I’d grab a saucer from the dish rack, head for the side table in the kitchen where the garlic was, skinning off a nub or two, crushing it in the saucer with a fork, and adding vinegar.
At the table I’d slide a newly-fried sunny-side-up carefully onto my plate so I could mash the intact, half-cooked yolk into its crusted-bottom, egg-white mat for a well-balanced, tarty flavor, heap some piping-hot garlic fried rice on the side as well as some salted diced tomatoes fresh from the fridge, and then pick myself the best-looking fried bulad or tamban from the serving plate. It didn’t matter whether the sliver-thin dried fish was still hot from the frying pan or already cooled on the table. As long as I had some garlic & vinegar in a saucer, my bulad or tamban breakfast was going to be a flavorfest that rivaled royal feasts elsewhere in the world.
You see, the secret to eating bulad, tamban, daing or tuyo isn’t in ignoring its funky fried smell. As it happens, fried dried fish will eventually smell during cooking because the oil used to fry it is on its nth outing, usually after having been used multiple times frying other, bigger fish. So all the salt & seasoning accumulated in it adds several more layers of flavor to the salt-encrusted dried fish upon frying. Not only that, frying dried fish is supposed to be done quickly in a very hot pan with only enough oil to fry it. Fried too long, it begins to taste not only extremely salty, but undesirably bitter as well. Which is probably why your first whiff of fried bulad, tamban, daing or tuyo wasn’t a pleasant experience at all.
In any case, if your Pinoy sweetheart did make sure that the dried fish was perfectly fried using fresh new oil and done quickly, your initial experience would still be somewhat skewed if no piping-hot, garlic-infused fried rice was on the table. This is the real secret to eating fried dried fish like bulad, tamban, daing or tuyo, which actually aren’t supposed to be eaten as main dishes, but taken merely as a flavor enhancer to the fried rice itself.
In fact it’s highly doubtful that fried dried fish offers any nutritional value other than giving you a toxic overdose of oil-coated sodium. But in the context of contrasting textures and flavors that a plateful of garlic fried rice, fresh ripe tomatoes and fried or scrambled eggs delivers, a tiny sliver of fried bulad or tamban no larger than your thumbnail dipped in garlicky vinegar opens up a whole new world of flavor. Every tasty little bit brings a funky flavor complex that your taste buds recognizes as salty, sour & spicy, contrasting with the sweet, refreshing crunchiness of diced ripe tomatoes, the rich, rubbery creaminess of fried or scrambled eggs, and the sautee’d garlic in the lightly-oiled, still-warm fried rice that revels in its pungency with your every bite. There is nothing like it in the world.
Yet by themselves, all these flavors and textures would not be new to you, of course. But combine them in every tablespoon that makes such a hearty breakfast, and the overwhelming presence of bulad, tamban, daing or tuyo in every Pinoy kitchen finally sheds the mystifying incomprehensibility that goes with it. With inter-island travel In the country becoming more and more affordable over the years, an ever-increasing variety of dried & salted fish & squid products have become instant favorites wherever they’re sold in the country. In fact there are dried fish specialists today that only sell bulad or tuyo varieties that don’t smell and don’t taste salty at all, but are more like delicately-flavored tocino or tapa that’s made of fish or squid instead of chicken, beef or pork.
Understandably, no king anywhere in the world today would probably store the humble bulad, tamban, daing or tuyo in his royal pantry. But if he did and he had a true-blue Pinoy to fry or grill it for him, he’d probably live not a less limited life, but rather a richer one. In your case, would you do the same?
So the next time your beloved Pinoy spouse fries some bulad, tamban, daing or tuyo on the sly, stick around a bit and see if there’s garlic fried rice, fried eggs, diced salted tomatoes and a saucer with vinegar & crushed garlic to go with it, so you can finally enjoy it the way it’s supposed to be savored.
So the next time your beloved Pinoy spouse fries some bulad, tamban, daing or tuyo on the sly, stick around a bit and see if there’s garlic fried rice, fried eggs, diced salted tomatoes and a saucer with vinegar & crushed garlic to go with it, so you can finally enjoy it the way it’s supposed to be savored.
If there’s none, there’s always a next time!
Occasional LiP visitor & commentator "Biz Doc" will contribute articles from time to time on day-to-day Pinoy realities.
I actually got tired (almost panting) reading this post.
me too! the piece i wrote originally had paragraph breaks ” )
LMAO, biz dak!
already emailed bob about this, hopefully tomorrow won’t be as hectic ” )
cheers,
already emailed bob about this, hopefully tomorrow won’t be so hectic ” )
cheers,
I got thru it ok…..I enjoyed reading it…..I think I would make my dipping sauce with….vinigar,lemon juice or lime juice…garlic..ghost peppers…and crushed tomatoes and a dash of fermented fish sauce..maybe a little soy sauce tooooo(made from fermenting anchovies )….that should pretty well take care of the dipping of the smelly fish and about anything else..
Are you Pinoy Dan? Now, you got me mouth watering…lol. Hey, I enjoyed Biz Dak post too but the effect of the format made me a bit dizzy (lol). After reading it I got so hungry that I ate a whole lot during lunch, not Pinoy dish though
hi jonathan,
i actually celebrated bob’s publication of my ‘testimonial’ on bulad & tamban by ordering a dangsilog (danggit, sinangag & itlog) at this wifi-enabled food stop. all i can say is, it’ll never be the same with what our moms made for us back when we were kids. ah, sweet nostalgia!
cheers,
Yeah! I miss the good ol’ days especially eating this kind of foof during monsoon season! Rapsa!
hi dan,
sounds like a good recipe for “pinakurat” sawsawan!
hard-core ‘expats gone native’ would probably add chopped ginger in the mix for good measure!
cheers,
Hi Biz, a dizzying repeat of Bob’s Bulad–II? You are just trying to re-enforce encouragement to Expat’s that Bulad, Daing, Tuyo, etc is nothing more that a 2-year old ham hanging at the abandoned out house building in the stick somewhere in Tennessee or at the truck stop @ Stuckey’s. If it’s done in the US, it is fashionable–if in the PHL, it is primitive!
hi mars,
i haven’t eaten 2-year old redneck* ham yet but if it goes well with garlic fried rice, diced tomatoes & creamy omelet, hey why not!
cheers,
= )
* said expression added not for controversy but for real, down-home flavor ” )
Well, first you cut the ham hock part, soak it in water to de-salt and boiled it with blackeyed peas, eat it with rice and collard greens–don’t forget the cornbread!
i could almost hear a banjo-and-fiddle ensemble playing while i’m savoring all those flavors in my head! hehe
cheers,
Mars Z,
Thats really sounds good now. The true southern dish. All you need is some sweet ice tea with it too. Good day and be safe. By the way how was your St Pats Day. Did you go to Savanah?
and yeah, i totally forgot about the ever-present calamansi!
no sawsawan is good enough if it doesn’t have calamansi juice– 2 or 3 pieces minimum!
cheers,
Biz Doc
First of welcome to LIP, glad to have a new writer. Very interesting article. Learned alot about dried fish. Have a nice day.
hi randy,
thanks for the warm welcome!
cheers,
I have been following your website lately and although I only read those ones that catches my interest, this one did. I started reading it but then I looked at how long it was and I said , woah, this is a long piece! Well, I read it anyway! I’m glad I did. It brought back memories of my childhood growing up in the Philippines. Everything about breakfast : the garlic fried rice, tuyo and all that came with it. Very nicely done! If you grew up having experienced everything in this piece , you’ll know what I mean. Good job!
thanks, dan!
forgot to mention, mars– my first writeup for LiP is still in the writing stage.
i decided to write & submit this ahead as a preview of the scope of the pieces i intend to write for bob’s largely expat-in-residence audience : understanding pinoy realities, written from a pinoy’s perspective.
cheers,
The piece should have been titled, “Mom’s Kitchen”. A very descriptive and detailed piece, a good read. Congrats on being a regular guest writer here, Biz! I look forward to reading your future articles.
hi ric,
i actually didn’t have any title for it. bob asked for one and i wrote back, “Something Fishy” hehe. i was quite surprised to see the first 2 sentences ending up as the post title. it actually works better that way, thanks to bob!
i’m still not done with my “first” piece for LiP so i’m thinking of a couple more teasers based on 2 new posts submitted by fellow pinoys. my take on pretty controversial topics hehe
cheers,
Biz Doc
Looking forward to your future articles, especially the controversial ones. Its always good to get a different perspective on things.
hi randy,
i’ll do my best!
cheers,
Biz Doc,
This is one of those rare articles that is so rare to come upon written about or for — a dried fish! The more I go on reading through the article the more I was convinced to keep on reading because there is actually some kind of “heat” going on there, in some parts, and then another, and then another, until I finally finished! An epic writing about a dried fish! Beautiful! Loved the article! Thanks for sharing! :0)
thanks for liking the piece hehe!
cheers,
I enjoyed this article—especially in the way it is written. I don’t eat these foods often these days. Especially when I have to cook it because the smell lingers on for hours or days if you cook it inside your home. But I enjoy it none the less. It’s like eating durian for me, I love eating it but not necessarily like the smell of it.
thanks, JC!
we were lucky to have grown up living in our grandma’s house, a classic pinoy residence built of wood in the 1940s, will huge, airy windows all over, and neighboring houses set back from property boundaries by at least 4 meters– everybody could cook salted dried fish & grill chicken or pork liempo on a countertop ihawan at the same time, with nobody ever complaining hehe!
cheers,
edit above : “with huge, airy windows..”
Nice article. While this certainly doesn’t describe the food I grew up with, after reading the comments I can certainly relate to craving the food I grew up with. I don’t think I’ll ever satisfy that elusive craving, can never go home as they say.
I’m not a big fan, but I don’t run for the hills either. I rather enjoyed some dried pusit I had the other day.
hi gary,
dried squid is a good start!
incidentally, i ran across a writeup of how people in israel prepared dried fish for eating— 2,000 years ago. their lakes teeming with fish, the israelites salted & dried them so that they kept well. to eat them, they’d steep salted dried fish in some hot water for a bit, drain them, brush on some olive oil and roast over hot coals.
i might try this method soon as i can find butterfly-cut, inch-thick salted dried fish! ” )
cheers,
Biz Doc;
Albeit my America/Irish taste buds just can’t rap themselves around either the smell or the flavor, I understand that each of us has memories of “Mamma’s (or Lola’s) Kitchen” that draw us like a magnet to those foods we grew up with. I watched my daughters enjoying there treats when they were young, and knew they were happy. I never complained over the smell again. It was theirs to enjoy. But I still smile when our youngest (she’s 28 now) eats a mango with bagoon. Her face would scrunch up, her eyes would water, then shutter and say: “Masarap Daddy.” What foolish Kano would attempt to stop a pleasure like that?
But I expect the same when I’m boiling my Corned Beef and Cabbage!
Wonderful article, sir!
I actually like corned beef and cabbage! hehehe
In the USA is easier you buy in supermarket and boil it at home, in PH oh heck you gotta make your own and my mom gets the meat a d puts in refrigerator with some spices a few days i think or overnight then has to pressure cook it as meat here is tough.
Cheryll Ann;
We have a couple of foreign owned butcher shops that if you order a week in advance they’ll get a nice corned beef brisket. It’s the turnip’s that are hard to find, but you can. Everything else is in the market. I make it every couple of months, and every Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s the Jamesons Irish Whisky that really hard to find!
hi paul,
my sisters loved snacking on green mango with sautee’d bagoong (guinamos in visayan), i could never touch the stuff though!
cheers,
Enjoyed your article but i don’t think pinoys need to worry about expats driving up the price of dried fish in the market place .
While working in state side airport it was always fun to watch the DEA dogs go nuts around the inbound luggage from Asia . Airport personnel would place bets on country of origin and India always won but Philippines also got high marks .
hi allan,
there’s nothing like smelling unique, intense food flavors off the baggage carousel hehe!
cheers,
Evil man, it’s now 1:12am and I am craving bulad, since I have already showered I don’t wanna go and fry some, GRRR! But I wanna eat some with rice RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!
hi cheryll,
no matter the time of day, seems like my bulad/tamban writeup does its job! hehe ” )
cheers,
You have an amazing memory for even remembering your younger days. Bravo!
The smell really is very strong and you can just imagine how Americans react to it, esp. at airports. Just like the tuyo, I particularly enjoy eating my green mangoes with bagoong/Shrimp paste with a pinch of salt. It’s really delish. Friends from the states go gaga whenever someone who just came back from the Phil gives them these delights. Buying these treats at Filipino stores ain’t cheap, y’know. It’s like being back in MNL, all over again.
Good read!
hi kaeisser,
green mango with bagoong? yikes! my sister in UK loves them though, and would sit through an entire plate whenever she gets the chance ” )
cheers,