Cadiz City is staging a unique cooking competition this Friday, Sept. 5, using only “buriring (pufferfish)” as the main ingredient.
To be held at the Cadiz City Park starting at 9 a.m., this culinary tilt, highlighting one of Cadiz’s sustained blessings – the buriring – will showcase two styles in cooking this fish – the traditional and innovative.
The 22 barangays of Cadiz were clustered into eight, and each group, composed of five to seven members, must showcase their culinary skills in coming up with “buriring” dishes that will offer a so-called “explosion of taste”, that visitors or tourists could like and love.
Julie Grace Dominguez, the city’s tourism officer and in-charge of the “buriring” cook-off, said that, in the traditional category, contestants are obliged to use either the “libas” leaves or santol fruits as souring agents, as well as butter or margarine to provide a fat-soluble flavor.
In the innovative category, each competing group is free to cook and present “buriring” dish/dishes not familiar yet among Cadizeños.
After the judging, spectators are allowed to enjoy a free taste of all the “buriring” dishes presented, Dominguez said.
“Buriring” is considered a sustained “blessing” for Cadiz as it appears en masse within the city’s waters every time “tiempo muerto” (dead season in the sugar industry) starts in July.
Dominguez said the link between “buriring” and “tiempo muerto” is quite “mysterious”, but it’s already a fact that cannot be ignored.
Thus, the upcoming cooking showdown will not only showcase “buriring” dishes as part of Cadiz’s food heritage, and of Negros’ slow food, but will also celebrate the yearly bounty that this non-poisonous species of pufferfish is bringing in to Cadiz, she said.
Cadiz Mayor Salvador Escalante Jr. expressed elation with the upcoming “buriring” cooking competition.
He said in a press release Sept. 3 that he wants to see scores of visitors from other towns and cities in the province witness, and taste, the “buriring” dishes that strengthen Cadiz’s positioning in the Ark of Taste soonest.
Escalante assured everyone that “buriring” is safe to eat. “Believe me. Just come, and eat our ‘buriring’, as it tastes like ‘heaven’.”
Meanwhile, Dominguez said winners in this “buriring” cooking tilt will bring home cash prizes.
The grand winner will receive P10,000, while the second and third placers will get P7,000 and P5,000, respectively. The five non-winning groups will be awarded P1,000 each as consolation prize. ||
