Tugnos Fermented Salted Fish In The Making: My Own Recipe

Hello Aseanhivers how was your day? This week has completely rain towards the end of the week. But this month is the season ug tugnos fish in the island.
Tugnos are very small fish with translucent bodies and a delicacy in the Philippines. There are so many motorcycle vendors passing around our house in the evening to sell this kind of fish. Accordingly it's illegal to catch because these are very small and it tnwds to Grow bigger. But I tried to buy it and I was surprised it's so white and I think this one is delicious to be fermented. We locally have "ginamos" which is made from bolinao fish but today I'm going to share to you how I made this fish into a ginamos.

This is the close up picture of the fish. This is my first time seeing this white fish. Because in my hometown we always have bolinao the same size but its black or the dominant color is black. So we ended up cooking it in three ways.

First is I washed all the small fishes. It's very difficult to wash them properly. They are so tiny and I have to handle it lightly because it might slice or just dissolve eventually.

Then I placed it in a strainer. In order to separate the fish and water. The fermented fish requires so dry or no moist left. So I let it stay in a strainer for 15 minutes.

Then I get a long container for the fermented fish. I place 1 tablespoon on the bottom of it. My process for this is layering because the fish is so tiny and if I'm going to mix it now probably they will be torn.

So I just layer them all. One tablespoon of salt then three tablespoon of fish then the salt again then the fish until I reached to the top.

And this is how it looks like. I did not mix it using a spoon because I think I might smashed them and torn into pieces and it's not good for the eyes or it's not appetizing anymore. And place so much salt on top of the most layer. By the way I mix salt and msg for this. And this will be stack for 4-5 days and this can be eaten. This fermented mixture can last up until 30 days.

Then the second recipe we made is the "kinilaw". My husband really like kinilaw. So I just sliced two pieces of onions, little ginger and add salt, msg and vinegar. And mix it well. After 4 minutes it can be eaten and I tasted it, it was so fine and I really like it than other fishes.

And the last recipe is for our kids. It's very simple just mix the fishes with two eggs and fry. The texture was really fine. We can't feel any bones. My kids like it very much.

And that's all for today hivers, I hope you like my fish recipes for today. Do you have this kind of fishes in your area? May I know how did you cook it?