Trip Down Memory Lane: Fried Milk Fish w/ Tomato Salsa

Back in Manila, daing na bangus or butterflied milk fish marinated in soy sauce and/or vinegar, garlic, kalamansi, salt, a pinch of sugar and pepper then fried crisp and eaten with fried rice, sunny side up eggs and a simple tomato salsa used to be a staple weekend breakfast at Aunt Lyn's home. She used to make it herself and she would normally marinate it for an hour or overnight resulting in something really yummy. This is eaten for either breakfast or lunch and is served with coffee on the side on both meals. If she serves this for lunch, the sunny side up eggs is substituted with salted duck eggs and grilled eggplant or pinakbet, a mix of vegetables that normally includes eggplant, bitter melon, kabocha squash, snake beans, okra and tomatoes and braised in shrimp paste. It's a quintessential Filipino home cooking. I miss it really badly.

I was at the Filipino store last Thursday and found this butterflied unseasoned milk fish. It kind of made me a little nostalgic for Aunt Lyn's daing na bangus so I thought I would try and recreate it. I used the same ingredients as she would use in her recipe: soy sauce, kalamansi juice, a pinch of sugar, a bit of salt and some freshly cracked black pepper. I changed it a little bit and added chopped cilantro, olive oil and pepper flakes. Instead of frying it though, I baked in 425 F for 15 minutes. It didn't taste exactly the same but it was similar because it has the same fundamental ingredients. I served it with the tomato salsa seasoned with kalamansi juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, chopped cilantro and Thai basil leaves, white rice and soy sauce dip.