Burong isda

Fish fillet salted and buried in rice to ferment for a week, then fried before it is eaten.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

• 600 g firm white fish fillet, in 3 cm pieces
• 500 g cooked rice, cooled
• 90 g salt
• 1 tablespoon annatto powder
• 8 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 tablespoons oil, for cooking a portion
• 2 tomatoes, chopped, for cooking a portion

Method

1. EVERYTHING ABOUT THE JAR, THE SALT RATIO, THE WEIGHT AND WHAT MOULD MEANS IS ON THE BALAO-BALAO PAGE, and it applies here unchanged. This page is about the one thing that differs, which is the fish -- because a fillet behaves nothing like a whole shrimp over ten days and every problem below is a fish problem.
2. FIRM FISH, AND NOT AN OILY ONE. Milkfish, snapper or gurnard. Mackerel, sardine or any other oily fish goes rancid in the jar long before the souring has finished, and rancid is not a thing fermentation covers up.
3. Skin it and bone it properly, including the pin bones. Shrimp shells soften over a week; fish bones do not, and skin turns to slime against the rice.
4. CUT IT NO SMALLER THAN 3 cm. This is the mistake that ruins the batch: fish flesh has no shell holding it together, and small pieces disintegrate into the rice over ten days until there is nothing to serve but sour grains.
5. Salt the pieces with half the salt and leave them in a sieve 2 hours. Fish gives up far more water than shrimp do, and that water would dilute the brine the whole method depends on. Do not skip this and do not keep the liquid.
6. Pat them dry before they go in. Surface water is the same problem again.
7. Pack as for balao-balao -- cold rice mixed with the rest of the salt, the annatto and the garlic, alternating layers, pressed down, weighted under the brine, 7 to 10 days.
8. CHECK IT AT DAY FIVE, which a shrimp ferment does not need. Lift a piece out: it should still hold together between finger and thumb. If it is already falling apart, stop the ferment there and refrigerate it -- the souring will be milder and you will still have fish.
9. Never eaten raw. Fry a cupful with the tomatoes in the oil over a medium heat, 8 to 10 minutes, until the rice dries and catches.
10. Eat it wrapped in boiled mustard leaves, which is what the sourness is built for.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

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