By Dr. Doreen G. Fernandez

This is a silvery, fine-scaled favorite among Philippine fishes because of its sweet white flesh and its fat belly which melts in the mouth.

Bangus is found on everyday and on festive Philippine tables, and is known as well in Taiwan (sibahi), Burma (nga tain), Thailand (Pla nuan chan thaleh), Vietnam (Ca Mang), Hong Kong (Yuk Sor), Indonesia (Bandeng), and Malaysia (Pisang-pisang).

This same species is abundant on the Pacific Coast of the United States; its range extends also to the Red Sea, East Africa, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan.

This fish has, however, a characteristic that bequeaths exclusivity and has prevented wide popularity: it is boney, with many spines, which Filipinos have learned to pick out of the flesh on the plate, or to soften by cooking in vinegar so that they can be ignored. Some two decades ago, however, an Iloilo housewife, wishing to spare her husband the trouble, undertook to debone it with tweezers. Now, her technique for removing the 38 branching spines (between the dorsal muscles), 14 along the lateral muscles, and 16 fine ones (along the ventral muscles) has caught on.

In the Iloilo markets, young boys chat and sing, barely glancing at their hands working the tweezers. Boneless bangus of all sizes are found in markets, supermarkets, restaurants, and in the Sarangani Bay Prime Bangus export repertoire.

Bangus is hard to catch, since the adult fish decline bait and leap over nets. The technique for many years had been to catch the fry at sea and transport these for breeding sometimes a hundred miles distant.

An old account says they used to be captured in April, May, June, July, then placed in large water-filled jars (palayok) for conveyance to ponds.

Today, advanced aquaculture techniques have enabled the mixing of sea and fresh water in the Alsons fish farms, the production of fry, and their speedy transfer to ponds where they are fed mechanically then harvested, leaping and live, sorted for the market (anything short of perfection, even a few missing scales is rejected), and blast-frozen.

They thus reach the customer's table only a few hours away from the water -- certainly more freshly and quickly than they could from any fish market.

Bangus is cherished by Filipinos in many forms and for various reasons.

Many remember fishpond picnics, where the fish are not scaled, just gutted, stuffed with tomatoes, onions, salt and black pepper, and thrown on coals till the flesh is soft and white, and the skin fragrantly charred.

Day to day, it is cooked as sinigang in broth soured with tamarind or kamias (Averrhoa bilimbi) or guavas and with vegetables; or prepared as paksiw, cooked in vinegar with eggplant and bittermelon (ampalaya); or with black beans or bean cake, or with onions in a soy sauce-calamansi marinade.

Although pond fish are not usually prepared kinilaw (briefly marinated in vinegar, ginger, chili, and other condiments) where bangus is available live and fresh, it is, as in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental.

Some restaurants have taken the silvery skin, dried and crisp-fried it into a kind of crackling (chicharon).

For breakfast, it may be split open, marinated in vinegar, salt and pepper, and fried to go with garlic-fried rice. Sometimes, smoked golden (tinapa), to eat with a salad of ripe tomatoes, onions, and salted duck eggs.

At party tables, it often stars as bangus relleno, stuffed with its own flesh sauteed with vegetables and condiments, then fried golden brown.

The belly is specially treasured for its melting tenderness, and is now luxuriantly marketed in belly-only packages.

This has encouraged some restaurants to offer a constellation of "prime-cuts" (fried, grilled, sinigang-style, paksiw-style, etc.) and young chefs to invent nouvelle delights: cooked Spanish style a la pobre (with garlic) or wrapped in bean skin and steamed.

Bangus is now available to all who love it. It can be small and inexpensive, or large and pricey; it is a constant in wet markets and supermarkets, and as an export product for Filipinos abroad and for non-Filipinos.

Traditional and regional bangus recipes include sinigang, bulanglang, inihaw, paksiw, dinaing, and relleno. Inventions and innovations have fancy names like Milkfish Manille, Green Mango Salad with Smoked Milkfish Flakes, Milkfish Quenelles with Dill-White Wine Sauce and Tomato Concasse, and Vientre de Bangus a la Pobre

At the 1999 Anuga Food Fair in Cologne, where bangus bellies were cooked with ube, squash, seaweed or saluyot (Jew's mallow) noodles, foreigners asked: Where has this tasty fish been hiding?

Where?

In the Filipino heart, of course, and in the food memories of many generations.

An introduction to a marketing brochure entitled, Bangus Discovery: Culinary Treasures from the Depths of Sarangani Bay, 2004 at the product launching in San Francisco, CA.

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