So what else is gold for the Anahawnons?
Junior Kilat describes it as "ang kinalami-an nga sud-an sa tibuok kalibutan" (the most delicious viand in the whole world). With suka and sili (vinegar and chili), buwad could turn people into a frenzy of bahaw (cold rice) devourers. But that is for the ordinary buwad only. Any Anahawnon could understand how the lure of buwad nukos (dried squid), either sinugba (grilled) or pinirito (fried), could sabotage the diet plan of the many. It’s a simple delicacy that could easily turn into a sinful chow when you are on a diet.
Now here is some science of fish drying:
Drying, just like salting, is another form of food preservation. In salting, salt content is raised to a level at which microbes could no longer thrive, except of course, for certain species which are necessary for fermentation to occur, as in the case of ginamos. In drying, moisture content is reduced to a level at which pathogenic bacteria either could not live or at least are slowed down on their activities. Most of our buwads are also salted along with the process of drying, resulting to salty dried fish.
If you are familiar with dried fish sold in the supermarkets, you would notice that most of the quality is not as good as the ones which we are used to. This is because the producers of these buwads also employ some modern techniques like vacuum sealing and mechanical drying.
With vacuum sealing, the fish need not be dried thoroughly because bacterial activity can then be prevented through oxygen deprivation. This is good for the producers because the finished product is sold by weight. By not drying thoroughly, they would be able to recover much of the weight. This is also partly good for the consumers if it allows the reduction of salting. The bad news is that a slight needle pinch through its vacuum sealed plastic packaging could quickly deteriorate the quality, and this is where fish spikes and bones are good at.
You may also notice some dried fish in the malls appear to be dull in color. They are probably dried using mechanical dryers – the process of drying by forcing hot air through the fish. The sun-dried fish would appear lighter because somehow, as it has also been observed in other agricultural products such as palay, the sun has "whitening" effect. This is why, if the product is sun-dried, the package labels would emphasize that it is “sun-dried”, which is almost synonymous to “better quality”.
Sun-drying also has its challenges like lack of control on availability of bright sunlight and unpredictability of the weather, all of which seems to be disadvantageous mostly to the producers. Sun-drying appears to produce dried fish with the best quality – good for the consumers. However, from the business point of view, it could be a completely different story.
As compared to ginamos, which could be extremely messy to handle, buwad does not have as much challenge when it comes to logistics and packaging. Unlike ginamos where a lot of people find the smell extremely repulsive and doubt its sanitary processing, buwad has a wider set of consumers throughout the country.
I occasionally buy buwad from the supermarket but still nothing beats the ones coming from Anahawan...with love :).
