Filipino Invention

A FILIPINO INVENTION that Keeps Caught Tuna Meat Pink-Fresh Up to Two Weeks.
By Randy V. Urlanda pp 22-23 Philippine Panorama Sunday, February 10, 2008 (summarized below)

Fishing is a Php50-billion industry in the Philippines, contributing about 4 percent of the country’s GNP. With an expected production of 5.34 million metric tons of fish (approximate) for 2008, it directly provides livelihood and employment to over one million Filipinos. Tuna is among the 200 or so species of fish found in the country that has high commercial value. The Philippines ranks 7th among the top tuna-producing countries in the world (both in terms of fresh or frozen tuna and canned tuna).

Aside from canned tuna, General Santos also exports a large volume of chilled and frozen sashimi tuna to Japan and other countries. Chartered flights regularly carry fresh tuna from the city’s world-class airport directly to Japan. There are approximately 2,500 pump-boats (large motorized outriggers) in General Santos that fish for tuna outside the waters of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Micronesia. It is estimated that an average of 300 metric tons of high-grade tuna is landed in the city’s sprawling fish port daily.



In the middle of 2007, the South Seas Tuna Handline Institute (SSTHI) in General Santos City, of which Bonifacio Comandante (BONI), a Master of Science degree holder and a candidate for Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Siliman University, is the technical consultant and president of the Dumaguete City-based Buhi Worldwide, Inc. with marketing offices in Makati, Philippines, commissioned Boni to engage in a tuna meat enhancement experiment using his Buhi solution and his expertise in waterless export of live fish that is induced to hibernate up to 24 hours.

The successful project began in September 2007 and ended in February 2008.

As demonstrated, live tuna catch by mini fishing boat and up-loaded to a mother boat and then it was put in a holding tank filled with cold water (25-degree Celcius) called Buhi water bath to reduce capture stress. Buhi (Pilipino-Visayan for “life”) is an organic , non-toxic solution, which Bonifacio invented four years ago that puts to sleep instantly live lapu-lapu fish so they could be air shipped to Hongkong without water.

After the fish has calmed down in the cold water, it is then injected with 30 ml of mineral salt solution into its tail, followed by air-ventilating it by hosing its mouth with water to put oxygen back to its gills, thus keeping its blood circulating in its body. This procedure keeps the meat pink-fresh up to the time it reaches the port seven days later, a facemask is then put on the fish while at the conditioning tank to prevent stress from visual contact with people and its environment.

The Siquijor-born Boni, as Bonifacio Comandante is called by friends and business associates, is the inventor of the prize-winning waterless transport of live fish that won a special award in an international inventors’ tilt at the University of San Francisco in the USA four years ago. He is on a successful pelagic venture, this time, using his globally-patented Buhi solution to enhance and extend the meat quality and freshness of caught tuna fish.

According to Boni, a University of the Philippines-Los Banos agriculture engineering graduate, “Metabolic acidosis is a condition commonly induced by capture techniques. Muscle contractions under anaerobic conditions result in lactic acidosis, which in turn depress both cardiac output and systemic blood pressure, due to lack of blood circulation, the meat of the fish turns pale. With this technique, the occurrence of lactic acidosis is prevented, thus when the tuna’s meat is graded at the fish port seven days later, its meat is still firm and pink.

Boni’s next project is a year-long one that involves putting captured yellow-fin tuna into hibernation like what was done with lapu-lapu fish, whose invention; the buhi solution is being coveted by big-time live fish exporters in Asia and Australia. They will design vivier (latin for life) boats with large aquarium tanks to ferry live tuna to General Santos City, where they will be transferred into four-cubic meter fiberglass hibernating tanks (two to a tank) where they would be induced into hibernation by Buhi solution. Once they are asleep, they would be shipped in waterless containers to Japan. After reaching Tokyo, the fish would awaken once it is put in a pool of water, as though it just came out from the sea.

Indang Cavite

A university Town that is home to Revolutionary Heroes, Cloud Rats, and the World’s Most Expensive Coffee.
By Randy V. Urlanda

During the cold nights of February up to the drizzly month of May, the woods fringing the coffee farms of the highland town of Indang in Cavite, Philippines, come to life when everyone else are asleep.

Palm civets, which have a broadly cat-like appearance with pointed snouts that inhabit the lush thickets of the Cavite highlands, clamber down from their lofty habitat atop coconut trees to forage on their favorite seasonal treat-raw, ripe berries of coffee trees that abound during that period.

Called Alamid locally, this omnivorous, long-tailed mammal that is 700-mm-long and weighs up to five kilos, counts the red coffee berries as part of its normal diet. The Alamid, which is a nocturnal creature that sleeps atop coconut fronds during daytime, eats the berries at night, but the beans, which have absorbed stomach enzymes, pass through its system undigested.

Folks gather the bracelet –like civet dung scattered along river banks and streams that is embedded with undigested coffee beans. Civets, when they have a fill of their favorite food, drink from the numerous waterways that crisscross the water-rich town 30 minutes away from the resort city of Tagaytay in the south.

Experts have proposed that enzymes in the stomach of the civet add to the coffee’s flavor by breaking down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste. The beans are defecated in bracelet-like form then washed, and lightly roasted so as not to destroy the complex flavors that develop through the process.

Kape Alamid (kopi luwak in Indonesia) is the most expensive coffee in the world. One small café, the Heritage Tea Rooms in the hills outside Townsville in Queensland, Australia has ‘kopi luwak’ on the menu at US$48 per cup, or a whooping Php2, 352 (at Php49 per US$1)! In a gourmet coffee shop in Tagaytay City, a cup of freshly brewed ‘kape alamid’ costs Php300.

Aside from its ripe coffee berry loving civet population, Indang is also home to another fruit lover – the giant cloud rat, Phloeomys cumingi (Southern Luzon slender-tailed cloud rat), one of six known species of cloud rat which is endemic in the Philippines. They range in size from 2.6 to 15 kilograms.

Called kunehong gubat (forest rabbit) by local folks, this beautiful nocturnal animal with dense, soft reddish brown fur with a black mask around its large dark eyes, small round ears, a broad and blunt snout and a long tail covered with dark hair, lives in the thick canopy of 20-meter-tall ‘irok’ (Arega pinnata), whose fruits, which are its favourite food, are boiled in sugar syrup and called ‘kaong’. Its sap is fermented into vinegar and wine.

These big deep-rooted feather palm Irok trees are not only the source of kaong and vinegar but also protect water tables and water sources. The town has 67 springs, some gushing out 281 liters per second. These springs, which have high alkaline content, flows down to rivers and streams where civets, who just had a fill of ripe coffee berries, drink and defecate on river banks and creek sides, which are gathered by ‘kape alamid’processors.

At 380 meters above sea level, nippy Indang, a third-class municipality and one of Cavite’s 23 towns and two cities and home to the 102 year-old CvSU (Cavite State University), formerly called Don Severino Agricultural College, is the “fruit basket” and “salad bowl” of the province. The town derived its name from a big tree called yndan (also known as anubing), which thrived in this upland area in the olden days.

“Due to these ideal natural attributes, including a pleasant climate year round, we have decided to put up a five-hectare agri-eco farm in Barangay Banaba seven kilometres northwest of town,” explains Mayor Dimero, a staunch clean and green environment advocate whose just celebrated its 353rd foundation anniversary last December 1. “We combined both urban and rural farming methods so that there will always be vegetables on the table, harvested right from one’s backyard or house’s terrace.

“Instead of ornamental plants, we encourage residents here to plant pechay in plastic soda bottles, so when you need a few leaves in cooking nilagang baka (beef stew) all you have to do is just cut them from the plant.”

To really have a trash-free environment, Dimero, a mechanical engineer by profession and an excellent lobbyist for funds when he was still the town’s vice mayor, also plans to put a material recovery facility (MRF) where non-biodegradable plastic garbage and the like could be made into bricks, while biodegradable refuse would be converted into compost for organic farming.

Riding on the trend of going back to nature health care, the municipal government is also allocating a 1,000 square-meter herbal plant areawhere medicinal plants like serpentine, whose leaves are twice as bitter than that of ampalaya, for diabetes, katakataka, whose thick leaves is good to lower fever, cassava and guava, which are good for ulcers, and a host of the Department of Health (DOH) tested and approved herbal remedies, which will be distributed to Indang’s rural health units.

Like Tagaytay City, which is 16 kilometers south of Indang and some of other nine highland towns comprising the third district of the province, which are famous for fruits, Indang, not only grow sweet pineapple, papaya and mango, but also claims to grow the best tasting dargon fruit, which it pioneered to farm in 2003 in the country.

Aside from producing sweet-tasting fruits and the most expensive coffee in the world, Indang has a glorious past. Its six revolutionary heroes namely: Don Severino de las Alas, a philanthropist and two-term mayor who donated the land now occupied by CvSU, which was formerly named after him, Jose Elias Coronel, a doctor; Hugo Ilagan, a lawyer and educator; Raymundo C. Jeciel, a colonel of the Revolutionary Army under General Emilio Aguinaldo; Ambrosio Mojica, a general of the Revolutionary Army, and Jose D. Mojica, who played an important role during the revolution of 1896, and fought against the Americans until the surrender of Aguinaldo. When peace came, they returned to normal life as community leaders and worked for the improvement and development of their town and its people.

With all these good things going on for them, Indang’s local government units aim to push through with their progress, cleanliness and peace and orderliness campaign through their unity with their more than 60,000 inhabitants. Fortunately, they all put a premium on environment protection, which in turn gives them clean air and water, and abundant crops.

'World's best restaurant' El Bulli to shut for two years: che

By Agence France-Presse, Updated: 1/26/2010

El Bulli, the Spanish restaurant repeatedly crowned the world's best, will be temporarily closed in 2012 and 2013, its chef Ferran Adria said Tuesday, citing fatigue and a need to perfect new recipes.

'World's best restaurant' El Bulli to shut for two years: chef
El Bulli, the Spanish restaurant repeatedly crowned the world's best, will be temporarily closed in 2012 and 2013, its chef Ferran Adria said Tuesday, citing fatigue and a need to perfect new recipes.

"No meals will be served in El Bulli in 2012 and 2013," said the guru of avant-garde cuisine and creator of "molecular gastronomy".

"But El Bulli is not closing down. These are not two years on sabbatical. I need time to decide how 2014 is going to be. We want the year 2014 to stand out and I know that when I return it will not be the same."

A statement on the restaurant's website added that "these two years will be devoted to thinking, planning and preparing the new format for subsequent years."

El Bulli, on Spain's northeastern Catalan coast, last year came top of the World's 50 Best Restaurants list for the fourth year in a row following a poll of more than 800 chefs, restaurant critics and industry insiders for Britain's Restaurant Magazine.

Gourmets the world over reserved sometimes years in advance for a table in the establishment, where about 30 avant-garde dishes are available on a menu for a price of about 200 euros.
But Adria, 47, who appeared tired and nervous, said he found working 15 hours a day "difficult."
"It's impossible with the current format of El Bulli to continue to create," he said at Madrid Fusion, the annual international culinary conference focusing on the cutting-edge in haute cuisine.

"It's like telling (British designer) John Galliano to go work in a factory."
He acknowledged that in closing the restaurant, he would lose his three Michelin stars.
"I have a lot of respect for the guidebooks, and when you go, you go."

Adria, who joined the kitchen staff of El Bulli in 1984, and Heston Blumenthal in England have since the late 1990s rocked the world of gastronomy by using science to "deconstruct" and rebuild food, both astonishing diners and delighting reviewers.

Taste-bud treats on the El Bulli menu have included oyster meringue, hot ice cream, frothy truffle cappuccino and liquid ravioli, while vegetables are turned into lollipops or whipped foams.
But he has had to respond to critics who say the chemicals used in his "molecular gastronomy" make it unhealthy.

"Can we be proud of a cuisine ... created by Ferran Adria and his chorus of fans which fills plates with gelling agents and laboratory emulsifiers?," another top Spanish chef, Santi Santamaria, said in 2008.

Adria dismissed the comments as "nonsense."

"Homemade ice-creams, those which are excellent, must have a stabilising substance to avoid crystallisation. Sugar goes through a chemical and physical transformation. Chocolate contains lecithin. Agar is a thick substance that has been used in Japan for centuries," he said.

Before announcing the temporary closure of El Bulli, Adria had put on a presentation of his new dishes at Madrid Fusion, including "hare with red fruit," "cannelloni with mushrooms" and a "strong cocktail" based on sugar cane.