Food Photography: Mullet fish cooked in young Tamarind fruit and nixtamalized corn pudding

Source - @cryptopie

Source - @cryptopie

Yesterday my mother served me this mullet dish which is just a simple preparation of a viand because it is only cooked with some Tamarind fruits and ginger pieces. It supposed to have some broth but I didn't had it with rice but instead with corn pudding which are made out from cooking dry and hard white corn kernels with some lime powder in order to make the outer skin of the corn kernels to dissolve and then make it soft in the process by boiling it in a few hours. You would believe that the long cooking or boiling process would strip it of vitamins but cooking it with lime powder actually unlocks the vitamins so that the body can easily absorb it and thus making the said corn kernels more nutritious compared to just boiling the corn with water only.

The corn is cooked for about 4 hours and half way through the time it is washed several times so that we can get rid of the outer skin that covers the corn kernels. Finally after boiling the corn kernels for four hours it is washed one again and then cooked once again as if you are cooking rice and it will take another 30 more minutes or so before the resulting soft corn pudding can be served. It is served with grated mature coconut flesh and can be eaten with either salt or sugar. I had it with sprinkled sugar on top and ate it with the Mullet fish. this corn pudding which is locally called as "Binatog" is always sold in the street via a vendor hawking it using his bicycle almost everyday, and so it happened that my sister was buying a serving for herself and then when my mother saw it she then asked me if I want to eat Binatog. I replied back that I want to because it is better to have it with the fish because Binatog pudding is very nutritious food to eat because it is cooked with lime powder.

There are other fishes which can be cooked with Tamarind fruit and it so happened that my mother was able to buy this mullet fish which she decided to cook with Tamarind fruit which is a viand called "pangat" and so it is called a "pangat in Tamarind. It is meant to be eaten with some rice and with some broth to make-up a slightly sour and yummy food particularly if you would eat it with your bare hand. I like that pleasant flavor of the tamarind and the way I eat it is that I would press or squeeze the cooked and soft tamarind fruits with my hand over the rice and add more broth plus maybe some fish sauce if you prefer and then eat it with the fish which can be any fish like Tilapia, etc.

ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴇ ɪᴍᴀɢᴇs ᴀʙᴏᴠᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴄᴀᴘᴛᴜʀᴇᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ᴏᴡɴᴇᴅ ʙʏ @cryptopie 𝘶𝘯𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥

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