Crispy Catfish

Last week, DB and I had dinner at Sentro 1771 at Serendra. I had not eaten anything the whole day and was famished. It was 5pm and the last meal I had was breakfast at 9am of 3 slices of Bag of Beans' Raisin Bread that dear sister brought home from her recent trip to Tagaytay.

As hungry as I was, I had just been reading food blogs, so no Jollibee, McDonald's or any of their ilk would do. I was adamant, even if I had to die of hunger (well, sort of. I think I would have caved sooner than later). "No crappy food" was my battle cry!

So I called up dear boyfriend to have dinner. We had just eaten at Brasserie Boheme the previous weekend and wanted to try another place. I googled and found Chef Laudico's Bistro. A friend had previously mentioned that it was good, so I wanted to go to Chef Laudico's. My bad, I did not take note of the restaurant's exact address, just took note that it was at The Fort. Needless to say, we couldn't find it in Bonifacio High Street, The Fort, or Serendra, and nobody we asked seemed to know what it was, either, be it security guards or the concierge lady. We ended up in one of our Serendra standbys, Sentro 1771.



This time at Sentro, we had the Sinigang na Corned Beef and Crispy Catfish. Both were good. The sinigang had just the right blend of sourness, saltiness, and umami from the corned beef. And you could tell it was not made with sinigang mix. The crispy catfish... what can I say? I wanted to replicate it at home. It was shreds of catfish flesh fried crispy with garlic, also fried with the catfish. It was soooo good with rice! The crunchy, tasty light meat was perfect with the soft rice. The menu description said it was adobo.. so, hmm.. I think I have an idea of how to replicate it at home.

So a few days ago I bought a kilo of live hito (catfish) and had them filleted. I simmered the catfish fillets with some local vinegar, salt, peppercorns, a bay leaf, and crushed garlic. Once they were cooked, the skins peeled of easily, and I was left with just the meat. I heated some oil in a wok and proceeded to fry and shred the catfish meat, adding the garlic from the adobo. The rest of the adobo ingredients got thrown in a pot with the rest of the catfish bones and heads, plus some salt, onions, carrots, lemongrass, and whatever aromatic veg I wanted to use up, to make fish stock.

Here is the catfish in adobo:

Here is the catfish when I just started frying:

Here is the catfish almost done:

Nobody makes fish stock anymore. But I can tell you, that fish stock made all the difference in the fish congee I made the next day. I didn't even have to add any additional flavoring to it - it was just washed rice simmered in the fish stock, and everyone commented on how flavorful the lugaw (congee) was. And it tasted just like how a good restaurant lugaw would taste like.

Fish stock and resulting congee: