Whenever my dad gets a little hot under the collar and has to work off some steam, my mother usually hangs a whole Bangus (milkfish) from a meathook in her kitchen. Then, she goes to her mint-condition 1980s-era Sony boombox and blasts "Eye of the Tiger" from its speakers. Then, as if on cue, my dad bounds into the kitchen and proceeds to go to town on the poor hanging Bangus--Rocky Balboa style--working his jab-jab-cross combinations to rightly tenderize the flesh of the fish. After absorbing enough furious blows from my father's menacing knuckles, the fish meat relents and finally yields as it falls through the fish's mouth and gills and into a bowl waiting on the floor. Left hanging from the meathook is only a limp, empty sock of fish skin, and on the kitchen floor lay a bowl full of tender fish meat. And thus begins the recipe for Rellenong Bangus--Stuffed Milkfish.
Aside from the preceding paragraph being unnecessarily laden with adjectives, it's also not entirely true. One, my mom wouldn't know how to work a boombox; and two, my dad only punches live animals (it's been a while since I've zinged my old man in this space: ZING!). So aside from poking fun at my parents for my own personal pleasure, I did want to paint a picture of how difficult it is to prepare Rellenong Bangus (stuffed milkfish).
All joking aside, Rellenong Bangus is perhaps one of the most time and labor-intensive Filipino recipes to attempt--its preparation involves the tenderizing and removing of the fish flesh through only a small opening in the fish's skin using only a spoon and a lot of scraping and squeezing. For Stuffed Bangus, the whole idea is to remove the meat from the fish while still keeping its skin intact--this is done by inserting the spoon through the gills of the fish, although my mom sometimes cheats by cutting the fish open, scraping the meat out, and then sewing the skin back together.
After the meat is removed from the fish, it is seasoned and cooked, flaked, picked over for bones, and then mixed with chopped veggies. Meanwhile, the empty fish skin is marinated in a mixture of soy and kalamansi. The fish meat and veggies are then stuffed back into the fish's body until the deflated balloon of fish skin resembles a whole fish again (It's kinda like squeezing all the toothpaste out of a tube, and then
stuffing the paste back into the tube again--only much tastier). After the fish is stuffed, the whole shebang is grilled or baked or fried or what have you.
The entire ordeal (and it is an ordeal) of removing and deboning the meat from a whole Bangus is easier said than done--which is why Stuffed Bangus is only made every once in a while for parties and special occasions (or on occasions when my father has to punch something--actually, that's not true, otherwise we'd have stuffed bangus every day).
