Tiny fishes
from the ocean

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

It was Good Friend F who let me in on the delights of the baby sap-sap, tiny version of the small and silvery fish we usually boil with red tomatoes as kinamatisan or stew in vinegar as paksiw. Find the ones the size of 25-centavo coins, wash, salt and dry them a little. Then deep fry them to a crisp --  there, you have another number for your appetizer plate which you can dip  in properly aged coconut vinegar laced with garlic.

The trick here is to get the ones that are screamingly fresh and to make sure to take them out of the hot oil before they get slightly burned. You want them crisp so that they crunch when you sink your teeth on them, but without the slightly bitter taste of the burnt. It's a tricky little situation, but good cooks would know, and I know you, constant reader, are a good cook. Else, you would have dropped  this page already by the first line – there he goes again, talking about sap sap.  You’ve gone reading this far, and so I know you’re interested in what new flavors can be coaxed out of this everyday fish.

But it really is all up to you how you’d want this to be. Some people I know want the slightly bitter flavor especially when they’re drinking vodka or beer with it. The beauty of this is that the tiny sap-sap is inexpensive, you can have the luxury of trying and experimenting with it. It costs something between P20 to P30 per kilo, and one kilo can overflow in your plate.

Aside from the sap-sap, there are other tiny fishes that can be done the same way.  People have been deep-frying the nipis and the guno all this time, they’re no longer kitchen news. But if you can stumble on baby sole fish, palad in our  dialect, you get one rare treat: imagine the flavors of sole packed in small bodies.

That, basically, is the secret behind why these baby fishes are such a delight. Good Friends C and B are devotees of the baby bangus, the ones you can get at three or four pieces to a kilo. They think that is bangus at its best, at its creamiest and at its sweetest.

Good Friend T swears by baby squid, its flesh soft and sweet. Baby squid, once cooked and bathing in its black ink and drizzled with ordinary coconut cooking oil, becomes a delight on your plate.

Now come to think of it, these friends are foodies who’ve been around the world trying out flavors high and low, their tastebuds exposed to practically all tastes and textures the  planet’s different cultures offer. That they would agree, without talking to each other about it, in the goodness of these tiny sea creatures should alert us to the potentials of this maritime resource.

Of course environmentalists can scream bloody murder – these tiny ones should have been allowed to grow and reproduce their kind in the ocean, otherwise, we are helping in the depletion of our seas. I agree.

On the other hand, these tiny fishes were accidentally caught after getting into fishermen’s nets and could no longer be returned to the sea. I am not encouraging their capture, but once captured, I don’t think it's a sin if we find some good use for them.  Even now, I understand, in some fishing communities, these tiny fishes are thrown away or simply fed to the swine.

This is not about depleting the seas, but finding use for what is  already there, indeed, for turning discards into delightful edibles.  It may not seem such a big thing to you, but remember that the process of turning throw-aways into dinner is an important feature of the great culinary cultures of the world. In fact, it was that process that gave us some of  the most delicious and classic recipes that we enjoy now.*

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