November 13 - 9:37 PM
What's The Popular Food In Roxas City?
That's the question @bbghitte left in the comment of my post "Chasing The Sunrise at the Beach"
Thanks for that comment, this is the second post that was inspired by her comment in my previous posts. And since this is about food, this will be my contribution to the Food Writing Prompt by @JonicaBradley. But before you continue reading, here is a little bit of ...
WARNING!
DO NOT READ WITH AN EMPTY STOMACH!
What is, or rather, what are the popular foods in Roxas City? To give you an idea, Roxas City, Capiz, is dubbed as the Seafood Capital of the Philippines. So I guess you already know what to expect in this post.
Fresh and Dried Fish
Surrounded by the sea, you can buy freshly caught fish every day in the city. But one of the popular products of the city is dried fish. You can also find dried 'pusit' or squid. A few years ago, they even have fish tocino for sale.
Shrimps and Prawns
Roxas City was a major exporter of shrimp and prawns. These are grown in fishponds and not caught from the open sea. And you can buy them fresh... alive even.
Crabs
You can get them in various sizes and alive! Yes! You can't get anything fresher than live crabs. And they are very affordable too. There are times you can buy them at around $5 a Kilo. But the bigger ones are sometimes priced at around $10-$15 per kilo.
If you have bought Phillip's Seafood canned crab meat before, they used to have a processing plant here in the city.
Clam Shells
You can find a variety of clam shells here as well. I'm not good at naming them though. The first image is a pic of huge clamshells. I haven't tasted this one though.
Then these little clams are the ones found just beneath the sand. If you remember in my previous post with a photo of a man raking the sand, these are the clamshells that they get. Locally we call it kagaykay. But I think this is also the type of clams that @TengoLoTodo mentioned in his comment to that post.
Normally, we just stew it with ginger.
One of the popular clamshells available in the city is the scallops. You can easily buy them from almost any of the restaurants lining the beach of the city. I don't have a photo of them though
Bangus or Milkfish
The National Fish of the Philippines is abundant here as well. Again they are grown in fishponds and they are absolutely delicious. You can cook them in a variety of ways.
Fried bangus. this is the easiest way to serve them. Sorry, the best part was already eaten before I could take a photo.
And what's a better way to enjoy your seafood than cooking them and eating them at the sea.
Tahong or Green mussel shells
Need I say more? I'm getting hungry describing all these different kinds of seafood. Again this is best stewed with ginger. Or baked with butter.
Oysters
Are you craving some fresh oysters? There is a floating restaurant here that would harvest the oysters after you placed your order. And you can have it for only a dollar per order.
Squid
Have you seen the beauty of the squid while they are still alive? The color of their skin changes. The pigmentations seem to move across their skins.
This is not a squid. I thought it was an octopus but it's something else. The tentacles are short. I haven't tried this either.
Diwal or Angel Wings Shellfish
Last but not least. The most sought-after shellfish. The Angel Wings Shellfish. It is called that because once you open its delicate shell it looks like angel wings.
They are harvested only from July to October. There were several years that we were not able to have this because of overharvesting. Locally we call it 'Diwal' because it's long meat looks like a tongue and they often stick it out. In our dialect 'diwal' means a tongue is sticking out or hanging outside the mouth.
Ok. So that's it These are the popular food in our city. So if ever you happen to drop by our humble city, look for these.
If you want to join the writing prompt about Food by @JonicaBradley, here are the rules.
Write anything about FOOD
Write 100% original content, and at least 600 words
Join and submit your story to PromptlyJonica
Tag @JonicaBradley
Have fun.
Thanks for eating... I mean reading
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I should have eaten before reading this , that oyster made me hungry 😂