Here are some exotic Pinoy dishes that I have encountered during my journalistic travels. “Exotic” means out-of-the-box or very rare.

Pinapaitan Ilocano Style. Pinapaitan, meaning “made bitter” (pait), is a famous Pinoy cuisine, a powerful soup that triggers an adrenaline rush. There are many variations among Ilocanos, Pangasinenses, Bicolanos, etc., but we focus on the most exotic kind — Ilocano style.

Whereas most variations use only goat bile (pork bile is a poor replacement), certain Ilocanos, not all, add a certain magical ingredient that makes it super delicious, namely, half-digested grass from the small intestine.

The grass is freshly eaten by the goat and mixes with goat bile that digests it just as it enters the small intestine. True pinapaitan must be served very hot, very sour, very bitter and very piquant (chili-hot). The play of sour and bitter and piquant is the key factor to its being exotic.

Pinaupong manok (sitting chicken) is a famous Pinoy dish. You simply steam the chicken sitting on a “platform” above but not touching the water, which has plenty of salt. You steam it slowly for, say, 45 to 60 minutes minimum. Somehow the salted steam makes the chicken super-tender.

Pinaupong kambing. The exotic variation is the pinaupong kambing (sitting goat). I encountered this dish in Batanes. We were drinking palek (native wine). By the time the pulutan, pinaupong kambing, was served we had run out of palek and shifted to bilog (meaning round, a powerful gin in a round bottle that invites liver disaster).

The hair of the goat is burned off with a flaming wooden stick, until all you see is the snow-white skin underneath. By burning the skin, you make it into kilawen (raw or half-cooked). The snow-white goat is served whole, sitting on a large tray. We peeled pieces of the skin with knives as we drank and dipped it in kalamansi mixed with a powerful red chili, until there was no more skin. Everybody had his own knife.

The skinless goat then goes back to the kitchen to be made into kaldereta, or goat stew, another exotic dish not covered in this article.

Ginamos. In Cebu, we woke up at 5 a.m. to go to the market. We were early so we could buy the live jumping ginamos (dilis in Pilipino, the equivalent of anchovies in the West) before it ran out. We did not wash the fish but kept its original sea-water salt flavor. It is washed a bit only if there are seaweeds or sand in it. We soaked the live jumping ginamos in kalamansi and chili, called kilawen, for a sumptuous breakfast. It was so fresh, there was a natural sweetness.

Kilawen is normally raw fish or pork soaked in kalamansi (the preference) or vinegar with chili and salt. The kalamansi or vinegar “cooks” the fish or pork without heat. The Tagalogs are cruder, leaving the pork or fish soaked in vinegar until served, making it “over-cooked,” too sour and with the freshness gone. The Cebuanos drain the vinegar after soaking to retain the freshness.

Adobong Bayawak (stewed iguana or giant lizard). In the marshes of remote malaria-infested Bongao Island in the Sulu Sea, closer to Borneo than Mindanao, I tasted delicious adobong bayawak. It can also be deep-fried rather than stewed. The best part is the thick muscles of the tail. The bile of the bayawak or snake are a better substitute for chicken or pork bile, which is used as medicine for malaria. Bile is better for malaria than the western tablets you can buy at the drugstore.

Sharkfin Leyte-style. Esqualine is a famous cure-all shark liver oil sought by the Japanese. The source of the liver oil is a rare deep-sea mini-shark, about 1.5 meters in length adult size, found in the narrow strait between Southern Leyte and Limasawa.

As the guest of the mayor who financed the export of the frozen shark livers to Japan, I had an exotic breakfast of super-delicious deep-fried fins from this rare shark that I will never forget. The sharks were bought by a Japanese at P30,000 each, circa 1990s. He took only the liver and gave back the entire shark to the fishermen.

Part 2 next. (Read the original article = https://eastwindjournals.com/2022/05/10/esqualine-the-wonder-drug/)