Krill

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Until I restarted writing and was forced to translate Ilonggo words to English for the benefit of our general readership, I did not know this was called “krill”. It is called “hipon” in the dialect, which is usually translated as “tiny shrimps” after its size and appearance.

It is now in season and expect it to appear more often on your dining table as torta, guinamos – fermented shrimp – as tiny bits in your vegetable stew or as kalkag, its dried version. It is apparently one of our “heirloom” foods, a sea resource for which we have a long eating tradition as witnessed by the many ways our kitchens can do it.

As guinamos, krill comes usually in  two forms: guinamos bisaya, or fermented shrimps the Visayan way, which is simply washed, then the liquids taken out, salted, sometimes jacked by ginger or garlic but most often not, then bottled and allowed to ferment.

The other guinamos is basically the same, except that it is pounded to a paste and sold by blocks. Our old folks eyed this with suspicion – there are guinamos makers they said who mashed the salted krill with their feet, who knows if they are clean? So, for this version of fermented krill, our grandmothers relied only on the makers they knew, and whose processes they have actually seen. Or they made it themselves in the kitchen, the making something of an event, because this is where they do the guinamos that is going to supply the kitchen for months’ worth of flavorings and appetizer.

While the guinamos, especially the Bisaya kind, serves as appetizer, maybe accompanied by something sour like green mangoes or, okay, the main viand itself, it has a hundred and one uses as flavoring.

For rainy and hungry days, when there is really no other food by choice or circumstance, the guinamos can come to the rescue: squeeze a kalamansi or two on three or four spoonfuls, and eat it with hot, steaming rice and lunch is done.

Guinamos is also an integral flavor enhancer in the Negrense stew called KBL, Kadios, Baboy Langka – black peas, pork and green jackfruit. To my mind, guinamos, in fact, frames KBL as a Negrense dish, its sea-salty taste adding a truly Visayan dimension to the stew.

And I bet not many of you know that many of the best batchoy stock is made with guinamos, which is added to the liquid in the early stages of the making. You don’t see the tell-tale tiny heads in the batchoy of course, because the soup stock is constantly “cleaned” while it is boiling, and is served only when it is very clear already.

There are people who use guinamos in the laswa, our garden vegetable soup, but I find that a bit distracting in this dish that is meant to be refreshingly green, considering how heavy and strong can it really get.

I’ve tried what I call guinamos salad of the hinterlands: fresh red tomatoes, deseeded and chopped, dressed with guinamos. One time, this was made interesting by bits of langkawas, crunchy, a tad spicy and utterly refreshing.

As salad dressing, somebody uses guinamos instead of anchovies to do what she calls native Caesar’s Salad, and it is good. I just have not decoded the recipe for it, how she has made the guinamos smell disappear and its taste blend very well with olive oil and fresh egg yolk. But there it is, one proof the guinamos has all the makings of yet another Pinoy contribution to the global dining table.*(To be continued: Pregnant krill and other tales.)

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