Sutukil is the
acronym for sugba, tula and kilaw,
theSouthern and Central Philippines’ native words regarding the ways on which
fish and other seafood are cooked or prepared. Sugba means to grill, tula
means to stew and kilaw means to eat
a raw food. Sutukil is a local slang and rhymes with “shoot to
kill”. The person who coined that word might
have done so as to put amusing effect on it.
The Philippines is an archipelago and most of its population
centers are located along the shore. For this reason seafood is one of the main
diets of the locals. And most of the seafood or sutukil restaurants are located
along the shore or by the sea. The open-air style construction of a building
makes the refreshing sea air and the scenes at the sea an ideal ambiance while
dining on these dishes.
The simplest way in the region to cook or prepare the seafood
is to stew, to grill or to make it a salad. Sutukil is three dishes but it does
not always follow that that the three of them are cooked or served for one
meal. In most cases a restaurant patron
may order just one of them together with other non-seafood dishes or drink as
additions.
In Mactan, Cebu, fresh raw fish and other seafood are
displayed right in the eatery for a customer to order his desired dishes. He may
buy a big fish so that it is prepared into
three dishes. He may have the lower portion grilled, the mid portion made
as kinilaw and the head portion
stewed.
Some people prefer seafood to meat because they think that
it contains less bad cholesterol and it is therefore healthier. Grilled fish is
one of the favorites in a seafood restaurant. Some customers like the jaw of
the tuna or the belly of broadbill swordfish. Others go for grilled squids and
other seafood.
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| tinola |
Tinola is a truly
indigenous dish of Southern Philippines. Its simplicity of preparation makes it
a dish for common people. The fish is boiled along with other ingredients such as
tomatoes, ginger, bell pepper, bulb onion, green leafy onion, and green leafy
vegetables such as cabbage or as an alternative Chinese pichay or the most available
lowly but highly nutritious malunggay or
horse radish. The tinola is seasoned
with salt and and vitsen. Fish is
usually the primary ingredient of the tinola but sometimes it is substituted
with shrimp, and seashell or a combination of fish and other seafood maybe
prepared.
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| kinilaw |
The kinilaw or fish salad is the Filipino
version of the Latin American dish cevichi. It is also somewhat similar to the
Japanese sashimi in a sense that the
fish is not cooked and is served cold. Most marine fish will do for the dish as
long as it is fresh. They include tuna, broadbill sword fish, the seer fish or
the tanigue, milkfish, sardines and even squid and shrimp.
In the vizayas region people prepare the kinilaw with coconut milk. But such practice is unusual in Cagayan de
Oro where people usually prepare the dish with the fish soaked in tuba or coconut toddy and coconut
vinegar. In addition the tabon-tabon
and the suwa or the native lime are
added. The trees of those fruits only grow in the region and this make the taste
of the dish distinct from that in the other regions of the Philippines. Other ingredients
include bulb onion, green leafy onion, minced ginger, cucumber and extract of
native lime juice. It is then seasoned with vitsen and salt. The taste is made
hot by adding crushed bird’s eye chili pepper which is called siling labuyo by the locals.
Because kinilaw is
eaten raw only the freshest of the fish will do as an ingredient and that
utmost sanitary procedures must be observed in its preparation to avoid food poisoning. The dish is
usually served with rice or on other occasion such as in picnic it is
complemented with a boiled green plantain, a type of cooking banana called saba.
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Ang sarap naman!
ReplyDeleteThanks Hannah!
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