Just had a wonderful Sunday, when I made kinilaw after a brief hiatus (as in three weeks sans kinilaw?) Sayang cuz I only prepared half a kilo of it; it tasted so good that my father & son team practically wolfed it all up.Kinilaw is a dish prepared with vinegar. A lot of us use the words “kinilaw” and “kilawin” interchangeably, but a friend from Davao said that these are two different dishes in their dictionary. “Kinilaw” refers to raw fish cooked in vinegar sans heat, while “kilawin” is a dish that uses meat — goat, pork, beef din ata. When I was a kid I was vaguely aware that my grandma prepared a dish named kilawing buracho which accompanied her arroz caldo. “Buracho” sounds malicious, right? It’s pork snout, by the way; go figure why they call it buracho. Anyway, when I was younger, I was totally grossed out by the thought that what they were actually eating were the nostrils of a pig, EEEWWW!!! Imagine all the other things that could have lurked in the recesses of that buracho. But as I grew up, I kinda learned how to like its taste, if only because of the toyo-suka sauce it’s stewed into. But one thing’s for sure: we never ate raw fish, not even sushi.

(more…)