Fried Espada Fish and Steamed Okra with Bagoong Isda

I haven't cooked Espada fish back home, but I remember tried eating one. Espada is always available in the wet market and is also one of the cheapest fish sold here. I bought one piece, about 750 grams and decided to fry it to match the Okra Eio bought the other day. The fish vendor cleaned it for me, so i just have to wash it thoroughly before frying.

For frying the espada fish, I used:
1/2 cup cooking oil
a teaspoon of salt
ground black pepper

Rub the salt inside cavity and on the fish, sprinkle some ground black pepper, heat the oil in a frying pan over high-heat, and fry the fish just until golden brown.



For the steamed Okra:
Wash the Okra and place it on a pan and add 1/4 cup of water, over low-heat cover the pan and cook for 3-5 minutes.
Serve with kalamansi and Bagoong fish. 

Skye loved the Okra dipped in bagoong isda and kalamansi sauce on her first try, and immediately saved some pieces of okra on her plate. Snowe likes the fried fish with vinegar and patis, she finished her food on her own! Yay, for Snowe! 

Grilled Oysters

Wash the oysters carefully and place on the hot grill for a few minutes until the shell opens. Serve each oysters on the half shell with a dipping sauce or sliced lemon.

I prefer this vinegar-onion sauce:
Combine chopped red onions, a teaspoon of salt, a pinch of sugar and ground black pepper in a cup or individual soup bowl. Stir until the juice of onion dissolve the crystals, then mix in a half cup of vinegar. You can add chillies and chopped spring onions if you like.

Sarap nitong pulutan!

Vacation 08: "Mud Crab"

FlipTrip 03: Oyster

"Ang pag-ibig ko sa iyo'y parang Talaba,
Patay na, Kumakapit pa."
(My love for you is like an oyster, it sticks even if its already dead.)

Isa ito sa mga Pamosong linya ng kwelang Rakista na si Kus Amante, Jr. Alay sa kanyang iniirog na si Riza. Pa pa ra pa pa.....


Photo taken by Kus.

Vacation 08: The day we went fishing

Skye is very excited to go fishing. Since the day we arrived home from Shanghai first Monday of December, she's been asking my siblings - Tito Kuz and Ninang Chette, to make her a fishing rod, but he is busy with the upcoming battle and gig, and she has to go to work for a week. She's been asking me everyday, "Mom when can we go fishing? I'm very excited!" I just said we should wait until Saturday because that's when everybody's available.
She woke up so early that morning, which is very strange, and went to her Ninang Chette's bedroom and ask her to make the fishing rod. Everything's all set by 9am. Chette made 2 fishing rods and we borrowed 2 extra fishing rods from our cousins. All of us were excited because it's Skye's first fishing experience, and I am excited, too, because it's been a long time since i did this.

So, we're on our way now to the fishpond


setting up...

placing worm on Skye's fishing hook

waiting for her first catch.......

after changing spots

she caught her first big Tilapia fish, Yay! When she felt her rod moved she asked for my help and I told her to pull it up and she did and we were all shouting for joy. She stopped to pose with a smile after covering her face and all from the splashes of water because of the wiggling of the fish, I think she's got mixed emotions. After that first one, she's on her own. She was the first one to catch the biggest fish among us, I caught a what she calls a kid fish and her tita Cath had a tiny fish, my cousins caught some, too, and Chette got all sizes. Skye caught 7 fishes in all, and she was very happy.


Snowe, my younger daughter, was also there trying to catch some fish but she wasn't able to get one, but she enjoyed being there shouting with us evrytime we caught one.

we had our lunch there and caught some more and headed back home.

and the fishes that we caught went into the grill that night, dipped with calamansi juice and soy sauce, Yummy!

Talangka or Hairy Crabs

There’s a lot of food scare going on these days, and I'm thinking “what’s next?” Wala na bang safe kainin!? From Milk to Eggs to crackers and so on… do we still have any options? Well, for me I just don’t mind them, because I know everything eaten in moderation is just fine. Besides, healthy or not, our time will come and we'll all die. Nyahahaha!
Just like eating Crabs. Oh, I soooo love crabs! Small crabs, alimango (mud crabs), alimasag (blue crabs). I even tried eating damuko.
In our childhood days (oh, don’t count back!), my siblings and I walk a kilometer long to and from our school. Along the road are lots of rice fields and a number of prinsa (it’s a wooden gate for letting the water in and out of the rice fields)
-or irrigation canal, and on these prinsa we can see baby crabs or pakot swimming and climbing up and down the wooden gate. Sometimes, we’d be curious and take a handful of them only to put them back and wait for the peak season of catching small crabs or “talangka.” It’s during the rainy seasons when you’d be able to find lots of talangka in the ricefields. We’ll use a fishing rod with fish bait or bintol (a square net with bamboo frame) or bikbik (made of coconut shell) to trap the crabs. We don’t only have fun then; we also earned some money, especially if we were able to catch more female than male crabs, because it’s sold separately, the female costs higher than male. (Of course females are more valuable… biased me… hehehe).
I really miss that part of my childhood, sighs...
Talangka is now rare in Hagonoy (Bulacan), maybe one of the reasons is the change from rice farming to fish farming and another is the use of fertilizers and processed feeds.
Gladly, I still can enjoy female crabs in this part of the world… not as how I enjoyed it before but a bit close. They are called hairy crab here, very much like talangka but bigger, but I'm sure it’s talangka.

I asked my suki in the wet market for this, “ci maoxie” or female crab, and this is the "smallest" i get when i asked for small ones.

I washed them clean and put it in the casserole. Place it covered on the stove top, of course you should turn the heat on...

and wait till they turn orange-y...

and there they are trying to run away from me….ha ha ha!


That's how i usually cook my talangka - steamed or halabos. I also make burong talangka whenever there are smaller ones available.