Innovation hits the buro

This one’s got quite a bad reputation, and we can’t blame its hordes of non-fans. Its reputation simply precedes itself, as its infamous smell wafts in the air. In this regard, it is not unlike the durian fruit, whose distinctive odor is compared to hell.

As a town blessed with the bounty of malangsi or freshwater fish, thanks to Mangabul Lake and its rivers and creeks, it is only logical that its inhabitants would find ways of preserving their catch. And they found it through not just drying them in salt under the sun but also through fermentation.

Unlike today, there was a time when it is very easy to find people around the town who knew how to prepare buro. The best fish buro I've ever had was the one my grandmother used to make from time to time. As a child, I used to watch her busy herself making it using gurami or tilapia. She would degut and thoroughly clean up the freshly caught fish, then rub them with a generous amount of salt. She would neatly arrange the salted fish inside the huge buyog or clay pot and seal the pot for some three weeks of fermentation. When this part was done, the fetid excess water was discarded and the fish were stuffed with newly steamed rice and, in my lola’s recipe, bamboo shoots.

My role was to make sure not a single housefly would get near her prized buro, for she claimed that just one tiny contact would affect the taste of the finished product.

I remember how it took me years before I finally tried her dish because I was too shocked the first time it was prepared as relish (that is, not the main course, but a siding or appetizer). How people could ingest anything that reeked of rot is beyond me. But years of observation at how much other people enjoyed it despite itself while I scrunched my nose at  one corner, got me curious, if not envious.

And when I finally mustered the courage to try – especially with steamed eggplant, okra, and fried fish –  it’s like a religious conversion story.

I would crave buro when I left Bayambang and lived in Manila for 25 years. Now and then I would ask someone from home to bring me some if they were lucky to find a good one in the market.

Now back in town, I’ve learned of an innovation they have done to my now-beloved fermented fish delicacy: Shellflex's odorless buro, or at least a version with the unwanted smell much-reduced. And it comes neatly bottled too, complete with a brand name and smart labeling. I thought the buro has come a long way from buyog to glass bottle.

Developed through the painstaking work of the Pangasinan State University-Food Innovation Center’s researchers, with assistance from the Department of Science and Technology, the Bongato East-based buro processing company calls its product Nanay Doray’s Sauteed Buro, which comes in tilapia or dalag varieties. They say the key to ‘dearomatization' lies in removing the fish heads.

The Nanay Doray brand is now being sold for export, with some of the produce vacuum-packed in plastic bags instead of being bottled. With coworkers, I’ve tried this bottled buro the usual way – sautéed in lots of garlic and tomatoes  –  and all the old warm memories of my grandmother making her own buro came flooding back in my mind. The former persona non grata at the dining table has now become not just a novelty from home but a certified comfort food.