Life in lockdown: the fish with a bird's name

We're running out of rice. My organic long-grain is taking its sweet time rolling into town from Nueva Ecija, the country's rice granary. We've run out of meat and garnishes and condiments and resorted to frying; the last time we bought supplies, the vegetable racks were wiped out. We picked up a bottle of kimchi and that was it, our vegetable fix.

So, dilemma laid out, we go to the solution: we checked out the grocery store across the street to see if the lines are manageable given the Holy Week closures. (Three weeks ago, we lined up for five hours and finished our shopping in under an hour. Apparently, its a normal queue time given the pandemic lockdown.) Lo and behold, the lines are not long at all, at least late in the afternoon. And the vegetable racks are newly-replenished.

This time, our story ended in three hours; two lining up for sustenance and an hour preparing what I've never cooked before: sinigang na maya-maya (sour stew red snapper). Technically, I've made sinigang, but never with a fish.

In my grandmother's lexicon, there were only two acceptable meat for sinigang: shrimps and fish. For shrimps, the bigger, the better. For fish, she favored only two: lapu-lapu (red grouper) and maya-maya. Lapu-lapu, expensive and hard to come by, were for Sundays when every family member comes to the ancestral home to eat lunch and merienda and dinner before driving back to Manila. Maya-maya, on the other hand, were for non-Sundays. Even until today, I remember what maya-maya tastes like in Ate Nena's sinigang... it's that common in my grandparents' household.

Both fishes are notorious for their bones. If you're unlucky to have a fishbone stuck in your throat, you'd need to have it taken out by a cat or by a suhi, a person born feet first. (In the context of home births, suhi children are believed to bear special powers. They survived a painful, abnormal, and dangerous birthing process and, therefore, are a natural at curing errant fishbones in the throat.)

Why my grandmother favored these fishes, I know not. I do know that my grandfather had five cats and my father is a suhi. So, when I saw the maya-maya on the wet portion of the grocery, this childhood memory returned. I must have this fish and I must make sinigang!

The maya-maya was on its last order: scrutinized but passed over, reeled from tongs pushing it aside, left behind on the butcher's block. The shame pieces, the ones nobody wanted. For me, though, last pieces are always the lucky ones.

My grandmother would frown at this. I'd know because I learned the wet market trade from the countless Wednesday mornings we spent together choosing food and on the daily kitchen dates where I'd watch her transform any ingredient to the most delicious meals. Buying fish, as she'd shown me, is to notice the silver shimmer, finger the skin and flesh and look it straight in the eye. You don't buy fish that you have not picked out yourself and had not been cut in front of you.

Unlike this one.

It's already steaked, cleaned. Bleeding a little, but exposed to the open airconditioned air, maybe for the whole day. No eyes to betray its quality. 

But there's no more grandmother to stop me.

I took them home, the lucky pieces I tenderly wash and slather in rock salt. I grounded black pepper before dropping them in a pan to sweat alongside onions and ginger. The scent of coconut oil will devour that "fishiness" I detest. But maya-maya isn't like the tulingan (mackerel) or the tilapia (St. Peter's fish) anyway. Above fire, it doesn't assault the senses, doesn't permeate every side of the house with the strong stench of the meat of the sea.

It fizzled and turned to white. Now I remember why my grandmother favored this in sinigang. It's not as flaky as tilapia or as chunky as tuna. It goes swimmingly well in a bowl of sour tamarind stew, surrounded by tomatoes, kangkong, and sliced radishes.

It's light and comforting.
The texture is warm and fleeting.

I've never succeeded in cooking sinigang, which I've only done with shrimps. This, however, turned out to be a good stew. I've added more pepper than usual so when it's piping hot, the sourness brings in this peppery kick at the back of the throat. I think my sister liked it -- she finished the whole cut.

For a moment, the dish made me forget the anxiety and dread that boils underneath this lockdown and transported me back to those carefree Sundays in that old house when the aroma of food wafting from so many kitchens was the only scent that matters. - 04/12/2020