SWAG

 

I've been gifting tinapayan, the Maguindanaon traditional food which uses fermented fish, to friends for a while. It's one of my favorite Magindanawn delicacies. The other day, I realized that I actually did not eat this frequently as a child. My sister and I could count by hand the number of times we had it. My grandma never bought one as she does not like mudfish. So, how come I have fond memories of the food if I rarely eat it? 

Then it dawned on me that in all of the times I had tinapayan, I ate it with Papang. To say he was a huge fan is an understatement. One of my most vivid memories was him bringing home three spreads of uncooked tinapayan wrapped in newspaper. The smell was so strong his bag stank for days. 

When I visited Iloilo last year, I cooked my first-ever tinapayan and gave it to Maiza as a gift. I was so elated when she liked it because tinapayan can be an acquired taste for some. It has a really strong flavor and it can truly amp up your rice intake. From then on, I've been gifting home-cooked tinapayan to friends as pasalubong when they ask for anything 'traditional' from my region. It was a single jar getting smuggled into Lokeren which made Erika an enthusiast. Ica had always been my constant tinapayan guinea pig (hehe) and this time she asked for a big batch of twenty. I joke around a lot that I should put this up as a business, and so I am grateful for Ica's prodding because it made me consider it seriously. 

 So, over the weekend, I made my first big batch of orders. From cooking gata (coconut cream) until it turns to lana tidtu (pure coconut oil), to nonstop stirring for two hours so that the fish meat won't stick to the bottom of the pan, and deboning everything for fourteen hours! 

See, tinapayan is a classic bony dish. You could buy a tub ranging from Php150 to Php300 and three-quarters of it would be bones and galangal. In Maguindanaon, “swag” means “bone” but it is most often used in reference to “fishbones”, as animal bones are more appropriately referred to as “tulan”. 

In our household, we labored through the power outage deboning spreads of tinapayan and called the finished product ‘Swag’. 

And I think that’s beautiful. Haha!