It doesn’t get much better than this, kinilaw-wise. A small tanguigue or spanish mackerel that was about 2 kilos in size, so fresh its skin was still luminescent and coated with that film that feels like saliva. At most, the fish had been on ice a few hours and the only thing better would be making the kinilaw on the boat after pulling it in. The fish was filleted, the meat cut into small cubes (including the skin in some pieces), then bathed in vinegar with lots of chopped ginger, onions, some fresh kalamansi, salt and chillies…
I am used to eating kinilaw in larger cubes, and learned to like it seconds after it was treated to a vinegar bath, but this version had been sitting in the vinegar for longer, and I found the effect on the fish meat unusual, it made it look almost like large ground fish… but the taste was nevertheless sublime. Really good. No fishyness at all as the tanguigue was incredibly fresh. And look at those chillies! Yikes, explosive heat, but you could temper it by only taking a few pieces if you preferred since they were sprinkled around the edge of the serving platter. Yup, there are tremendous advantages to shopping in the Coron market and having a local make your kinilaw…delicious! The actual fish used for the kinilaw above is the tanguigue in the left part of the second picture…
More kinilaw? Check these previous marketmanila posts out:
Kinilaw na Dilis a la Seaman / Anchovy Seviche
Kinilaw na Malasugui / Swordfish Seviche
Kinilaw na Malasugui, CDO Style
Kinilaw na Guso at Lato / Seaweed Salads
18 Responses
This is just as good for breakfast and as well as for “pulutan”!!! Looking at the chopped up chillies makes me drool! :)
Makes me salivate on this one hahaha!
nice… can’t even remember the last time i had kinilaw
Wow. Kinilaw!
What’s that black thing on the kinilaw?
I have a good friend(in her 70’s) who makes very very good kilawin. She puts a lot of red and green chilies which I absolutely love. I love eating it as is and hers is not the ‘vinegary’/artificial-asim type. I don’t remember eating a memorable kilawin anywhere else except hers. Thanks for this post, now, I’m more bent on pursuing a trip to Palawan just for the seafoods and maybe for the kilawin as well!
Stop it awreddy! All this fresh fish is driving me insane! Spanish Mackerel is one of my faves and I can catch it here along the Goleta, Santa Barbara, and Ventura coasts. They come in by the zillion in the summer time!
We cook it on a Hibachi grill right on the beach seasoned with a bit of salt and garlic.
We then eat a tomato, cucumber,onion salad dressed with a tad of Alamang, and it is pure heaven! I bet Kinilaw would not be too far behind.
Thanks MM, you are really a good time guy!
Yum! I love kinilaw…the fresher the better :)
Yum!Yum! Kinilaw na Tanigue, may fave pulutan.
Litrato pa lang supersarap na.Paano pa kaya kung totoo na?
I believe the “black thing on the kinilaw” is the skin that was left on the fish cubes.
I love kinilaw anything and tangigue is one of the best. It doesn’t flake very easily and it holds up to the acidity of the dressing. I like it very raw adnd very fresh. Pass me the San Mig Strong Ice please. *lol*
I love kinilaw ng tanguigue…yummy…
The white stuff threw me off a bit… I thought it was feta cheese! Now, that would be something different.
Mmmmm, that looks so good! Haven’t had this for a long time… my grandparents lived right by the beach and my lola would often hail the incoming fishermen to see what they had caught the night before. This was one of the frequent fliers (or rather, swimmers) on our lunch table :)
I just followed your link to guso and lato (which I remember fondly as well) and noticed that you only have pictures of the already-blanched guso and lato, none of the unblanched guso which you also referred to in your post. How I miss those seaweed salads! We also used to eat another seaweed (the name escapes me at the moment) which kind of looked like green capellini and was used in soups— that one I never got too excited about though.
Hi, MM! The Kinilaw is making me hungry, mmm…anyway, I wanted to ask you about native vinegar. Exactly what do you mean when you say native vinegar? As a lover of kinilaw, adobo, etc., I’m just learning now how important it is to choose the kind/brand of vinegar you use in cooking. I used to buy popular brands of vinegar advertised on media here, up until a friend of mine told me that those vinegars were unhealthy because they were just chemicals. I’m not sure about the science since I’m just a cook, but great vinegar becomes deliciously sour by aging, I think. Most commercial brands in supermarkets become sour because of chemicals added rather than aging, since the manufacturers are always in such a hurry to get their goods onto grocery shelves.
The type of vinegar I like is one that tastes like it’s got alcohol in it, a very subtle taste but also very sour! I was at a Negros Expo late last year & came across some great vinegar brands there, but unfortunately, most of them don’t have outlets here in Manila. Based on your blog, you sound like you definitely know about vinegar, & native at that. I hope you don’t mind my asking what vinegar/s you use & where you get them from? Really love your blog!
Maripi, good question. I don’t think I have done an all-encompassing post on vinegars, and I don’t have much expertise on the subject… but I have done individual posts on things like coconut vinegar, here and even duhat vinegar, here. By native vinegar, I usually refer to either cane or coconut vinegar, though nipa vinegar is superb as well. I always emntion native vinegars as I hope folks will buy and use more of them rather than say the acidic commercial ones in plastic bottles in the groceries. But one has to be careful to ensure that native or artisanal vinegars have at least a 4-5% acidity level which is what you want in dishes like kinilaw, I think. At any rate, I didn’t see the bottle of vinegar used for this particular kinilaw but it was probably more likely to be a commercial one rather a purely NATIVE one. As for the types of vinegar, I have at least a DOZEN in our pantry at any given time. I like Spanish Sherry vinegars, love balsamic vinegars and have at least 6-8 kinds of those, ranging from 1 year to 18 year old balsamics. I have tried duhat, nipa, coconut, sugarcane, champagne, red wine, white wine, apple cider, etc. Apple vinegar is mild and superb for salads I find… so the list is quite extensive and its a bit of trial and error to find the ones you like. Try apple cider vinegar in your adobo, for example, it turns out really nice I find… I hope I haven’t confused you further… :)
Is it a standard for kinilaw that it should be drowning in vinegar, or no?
I have a particular aversion to vinegar, but at one point during a Visayas vacation, I worked up the strength to try out a kinilaw that was graciously served to us by our host from Negros, and I have to say that it tasted awesome.
Not sure if it was just the fresh fish, or some other type of vinegar, or that it seemed to me like the fish wasn’t really drowning in the vinegar, which made me try it out. I’ve seen different versions of kinilaw where the vinegar was almost a soup, hence I don’t even try those out. Yet from the looks of the kinilaw that was served to you, it looks similar to the one I tried, probably minus the ground-meat look.
JE, you are really supposed to “bathe” the slices of fish in vinegar, at least in my book. I don’t like it soaking in vinegar for longer than a few minutes as it turns tough. Commercial vinegar can have a harshness to it that is distasteful. I like more native or artisanal vinegars better…