Recipe | Fried Bangus Sinigang

AM wanted fried fish to go along with sinigang, but I wanted the boiled fish instead.  So I might as well combine both, which is similar with the Tagalog's Tochio dish.

Ingredients:

1 bangus (milkfish) fish head

rock salt

4-6 pcs tomatoes, quartered

4-6 pcs red onions, quartered

2-4 bags of small sampalok (tamarind)

1 tali ng kangkong leaves or more if you want

*sitaw (legumes), cut in 2 inches

*1 eggplant, diagonally sliced or whatever slice suits you

*banana blossom or puso ng saging, chopped, salted for five minutes and rinsed

1 medium-sized labanos (radish), diagonally sliced

okra, sliced

green chili

4 cups water

For fried bangus:

Rock salt

Bangus cut crosswise

1 cup flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

Ziploc bag

Oil

Procedure:

1. Rub rock salt onto fish.
2. Heat pan, then pour oil.
3. Mix flour, salt and pepper in a Ziploc bag.
4. Dump in cut bangus except for its head.  Shake.
5. Dust-off excess flour on fish before placing it into warm oil for frying.  Lower the heat to medium.
6. Flip over and set aside once fish are cooked.
7. In a pot, place in tomatoes, onions, fish head, and eyeball a good amount of rock salt.
8. Pour in 4 cups of water.  Then bring it to a boil.
9. Add in sampalok and radish.
10. Set aside fish head.
11. Once sampalok are cooked (when it's popped out and are softer), strain each piece and submerge the strainer into the simmering/boiling soup while extracting its juice using the back of your ladle.
12. Discard sampalok.  And you can place back the fish head into the soup.
13. Add in sitaw, if you have, together with the eggplant, and banana blossom (puso ng saging).
14. Once half-cooked, add in kangkong, green chili and okra.
15. Taste the soup.  Add rock salt if needed.  If it's too sour, you can add more water and adjust its saltiness to your liking.
16. Serve hot with rice.

For video recipe: