The Amature's Crazy Misadventure of Bosou Making

For those unfamiliar with one of Borneo's island's local ethnic's language, bosou is a way of preserving meat or fish by pickling them. Most popular ones are bakas (wild boar) bosou and fish bosou. For religious reasons, I have never eaten wild boar or any of its kin. I am sure it's delicious though.

I have a vague childhood memory of eating pickled fish, but I don't know if it's called bosou as well, because instead of fermenting in rice, the fish was put in tapioca paste. My grandmother brought it from her hometown when she visited us. It tasted so delicious! My mother even successfully tried to copy the recipe, but it was just for that one time. She never made them again, for unknown reasons.

On my way home from Sandakan last year, I bought two small plastic containers of fish bosou in Kundasang, which is the worst decision to make, because it was that good, and I don't want to ever stop eating them three meals a day. Before you know it, my sorry supply of fish bosou were polished off.

As luck would have it, several months later, I found, in our town's Thursday's farmer's market, an elderly lady selling several small containers of bosou. Again, for religious reasons, I can't just buy from anyone else, otherwise why would I deprived myself of this delicious fermented fish that is bosou! So every week, I would return to her stall, buying all the fish bosou she had available that day. Until one day, she ran out of fish to pickle and she had to stopped selling it. She also said she'll resume selling fish bosou next month, which is this month, but I went to her stall a few times, and there's still none.

So, what did you do when your supplier stopped production? You made them yourself, of course.

Which brings me here. The reason I am sitting in front of my laptop, in my stifling hot bedroom and writing in my blog that was in hiatus, is to tell you a story of me making fish bosou.

If you were one of the blogs that posted recipes of fish bosou and noticed a sudden peak of pageviews to that particular post, I can guarantee 75% of your traffic came from me.

Let me give you a brief look at the ingredients I put together from my research from the other websites.

1. Freshwater fish

2. Rice

3. Pangi

4. Salt

5. Bunga kantan (or in English it's called torch ginger)

6. Bamboo shoots

7. Tuhau

8. Mushrooms

9. White chilli pepper

10. Bawang kucai (or in English it's called chives)

11. Ginger

Freshwater fish is highly recommended in making fish bosou. Any kind of freshwater fish is good, but most websites recommended pelian fish. My concern at that time was where to find pelian fish? Our town being just a boat-ride away to the South China Sea, is the reason our fish market only sells saltwater produce. Plus, when I looked it up online, the only way I was ever going to get a pelian fish is to go to a tagal river where fishing is prohibited, and can get you fined and some jail time.

I told my parents of my trouble: about the lack of fish bosou in my life, and where can I get pelian fish in this town? My father told me of the next town over where the people there only ate freshwater fish, as access to the ocean is far too limited. He should know of this, because we used to live in the said town for almost eleven years. I was excited. I was already planning our road trip.

Luck was on my side. On my next trip to our town farmer's market (let's call it Week 1), I found a stall selling pelian fish! I cannot contain my joy. Except that I have to, because the pelian fish costs from RM18 to RM50. Per fish! Not per kilogram! The price wiped the smile from my face. So I bought the cheapest one. Compared to the expensive ones, this fish was the smallest. I managed to get RM15 for it, because the writing on the price sticker was smudged, and neither me and my father, nor the stall owner can read what it said.

Later that week, I went to Giant Hypermarket which is near my house to buy cupcake ingredients for my nephew's party at kindergarten when I came across a pelian fish! Cheaper! Bigger! After I made sure with my father it's the same fish we bought together a few days ago, I happily put the fish in my basket. At Giant, they don't call it pelian though. It's by another name called sultan fish. That's why it had me confused.

So, all I need to do next is to get the other extra ingredients that gets put into the bosou. Which is easy enough.

Except that I cannot find pangi! Pangi! Gosh. Apparently, it's harder to look for a place to sell pangi than I thought and the sure place you are guaranteed to get them is at Donggongon market, which is an hour drive from our place. I went to the spice stalls at our town's market and had asked for pangi, and the nice elderly man, which I think is the stall's owner, laughed apologetically and had asked me to look for people who looked like they came from a remote village, they might sell pangi there. I circled that week's farmer's market three times to make sure I didn't miss any of them and found no pangi.

A higher being from above must have find my desperation for bosou making either adorable or annoying, because we had some business to do over in Penampang anyway so I get to go to the Donggongon market to get my pangi. Cue the excited squeals.

I bought packets of them since I don't know when I'll be able to go to Donggongon market again.

Another visit to the farmer's market the next week after (let's call it Week 2), and I had the most productive shopping ever. I bought all the other ingredients needed and I came home happy, and can't wait to start bosou making.

Here were the two pelian fish I bought. The smaller fish was from the fish market and the bigger one on the right was from Giant.

First thing's first is to clean the fish. I have to gut the fish and descale them. I had never gut a fish before, but I always said I can do it when there's a desperate time came for me to do it. Today is that day. I had to call my mother into the kitchen and asked her to teach me how to clean it. She was watching her favourite Korean television show at the time but I can't tell if she's annoyed or not. Best to not find out. The expensive, sorry of a fish I bought from the farmer's market had already been gutted by the person who sold them, which only leave me to clean the big one I got from Giant. My mother stood behind me, looking over my shoulder to make sure I cleaned the fish properly. If it wasn't for her doing that, I would have saved that sac of white stuff I found in its guts that I thought were eggs. It turns out to be the fat. Urgh...

The pelian fish scales were as big a rose petals. I tried plucking it, but it took a good chunk of my time and I'm tired from standing over the sink for too long. I tried scraping it with scissors and the fish might as well resurrected from the dead to laugh at me. I don't want to use the knife as it might cut into the flesh. Then my eye rested upon this brush of nails, made to do exactly that, scale a fish. One stroke of this beast of an invention and the scales came right off. It was flying everywhere, including into my hair, making a mess. It was the most satisfying thing I have ever done to a raw ingredient.

One of the blogs mentioned cutting the fish in fillet style, debone it. I thought I could do it. Hey. How many times have I watched people did it on that Korean television show? That celebrity in that show also claimed that he had never done it before, and look how beautifully he cut them.

So I sharpen the kitchen's knife, the act that only my parents ever done, because they had children who only knew how to use the knife, but not when it comes to maintaining it. I sharpen it the way I have seen my parents did it, the way I have seen people on television did it, knowing the dos-and-don'ts of knife-sharpening I have read on Tumblr screenshots on Pinterest. The sound of the knife being grounded over the sharpening stone echoed in the kitchen and can be heard from the living room (Probably, I wouldn't know. My mother didn't comment anything).

The knife was sharp enough. It's only me who didn't have the skills.

This was the pelian fish that I got from Giant. With the way I cut it, it looked like I almost minced the fish! I was upset of course. I thought I could do it. But then I decided to just accept the fact that that was the outcome of my first ever attempt to fillet a fish. I decided that it was a much needed learning experience. A learning experience that I am not in a hurry to perfect though. I left the fish looking like that. I'm going to eat it anyway, and my stomach doesn't care what it looked like.

There was still so much meat left on the bones that I decided to boil it to eat later.

Learning my lesson, I have decided to just cut the other fish like this. While wondering where went wrong when I butchered the bigger fish, I remembered something from when I was reading from that same website that told me to fillet the fish. It was so that I won't be uncomfortable separating the meat from the bone when I'm eating the bosou. I mean, really? It's a fish! What do you expect? Of course there's going to be bones in them!

I put everything in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge (Please note that I wrote fridge, not freezer). I cleaned the kitchen so that my family can use it next. I have been hogging the kitchen all afternoon. After I was done, I decided to take a break as I haven't had lunch yet and had been feeling dangerously light-headed. Plus my heels were killing me from standing too long.

One thing I noticed was that during I was handling the pelian fish, it was rather oily from fat. The fish that I boiled for my lunch, it tasted like patin fish. My father concluded that the fish I bought from Giant must have been grown commercially. That would explain the oil from fat and the patin-like taste.

My father also hilariously commented that the lady who sold me the pelian fish from the farmer's market must have caught them in the tagal river, because the fish only lives in the upstream of the river and the chances that the fish can be found downstream was if there's a flood from the rain. A tagal river can be found in our district a few kilometres away from town. I was then reminded of the story a friend told me that he always fished in the said tagal river, and thought that there must be some truth in it.

It was purely conspiratorial theory of course. Please don't arrest me for buying fish product from suspected tagal river fishing. If anything, please make rounds at the farmer's market to investigate.

Moving on.

I took the remaining rice from the rice cooker pot and cook a new batch for the family. There must have been three cups worth of rice in there. The recipe requires for cold rice, not freshly cooked one. Although there's some blogs that said to use hot rice. 

If you notice, I was already using fluorescent light, as it was already early evening. I moved to the dining area, where I set up station.

Aside from the rice, first I add the bunga kantan or the torch ginger after I chopped them up.

Next came the young bamboo shoot. I remembered this ingredient from the bosou I bought in Kundasang. Only that I can't recognise what it was at the time. It came in a plastic bag already shredded like so. I only need to wash it and put only two handfuls.

The rules I read for making bosou was that the ingredients we put in must be dry, otherwise it will grow mould or something. I used quite a lot of paper towels to dry this bamboo shoot. In the end, I had to come to terms the bamboo shoot will never be dry, so I just get it as close to dry as I can. Instead of wet, now it's just moist.

Make sure to wash thoroughly. Although we make sure we prepare our food hygienically, the person who provide the raw ingredient might not. Case in point, I found a baby-thin strand of hair on the bamboo shoot that I am pretty sure was not mine! I had thick strands of hair that I inherited from my father's side.

The pink dots is tuhau. Tuhau is a type of vegetable we commonly eat raw after being pickled in white vinegar. But I just put them fresh after slicing since it's going to be fermented anyway. Most people already know this, but for those who don't, tuhau emits a funky smell that can be found on an insect. Some people can't stand the smell let alone eating it. You're going to be bored reading this over and over again, but dry the tuhau before putting it in.

This is mushrooms. They're tiny and available at RM4 a bag. I was lucky to be able to get my hands on this because apparently they had their seasons to grow.

Now, this is a vague ingredient to add. Why you may ask? I remember picking the Kundasang fish bosou apart to figure out what goes in it and I remembered coming across this type of mushroom. But when I asked the person who sold the mushroom to me, she told me she didn't know. She even called her mother over to ask, but her mother had no idea either. But I decided to put it in anyway.

I didn't wash this one, because of the culinary rule. But I put spread them carefully. I don't want to come across another strand of hair.

This is white chilli pepper. If you read somewhere that the bosou requires "white pepper", they meant this pepper, not the powder one or the bean one. Again, dry the chilli after rinsing them.

I cut the pepper right in the middle like in the picture above. You can add as many pepper as you like. For me, I don't like my food to be spicy. If it needs extra kick, I'll just add-on some chilli later.

Also from here, you can see the small mushroom I added earlier.

I then add a bunch of chives, just the roots. Make sure they're dry (Hey, I'm also taking directions here).

I almost forgot to add ginger. The one in the picture is around three inches long.

I cut it up into little matchsticks.

Salt is the most important ingredient. It helps to preserve the fish and helps mould from growing. So you might want to put adequate salt in your mix. In mine, I put seven spoons of the amount you see in the picture.

I licked my hands to avoid waste and golly does the mix tasted salty

This is what the rice mix looked like pre-pangi.

This is the pangi that had been giving me so much grief. I vented to my friend about how hard it is to acquire this thing. He laughed at me and pointed to the Kota Kinabalu market with his lips and said pangi is available there.

But, next time I needed some pangi, I should just give him a call. He sort of promised to get some for me from the Donggongon market. Sort of. I decided to give him a benefit of the doubt.

Alright. This is what the rice looked like with pangi mixed in. I've read in one of the blogs that the pangi smells like coffee. But it smelled more like cocoa in my opinion. The mixture stuck to my hand, but I had to keep myself from licking it as I did earlier. From what I read, pangi contains low level of cyanide. One can never be too careful.

So I stepped back after taking that picture, quite proud of myself thinking that I have done my work. But I can't help but hearing this nagging voice at the back of my head telling me there's something missing. Can you guess what it is?

That's right! The fish! I felt so silly to have forgotten the one ingredient that makes a fish bosou what it is, fish! The fish was still oozing with pink blood, so for the fish, I also pat them to dry using paper towels.

This is what it looked like when finished.

Okay, something was bugging me as I am writing this piece. I constantly reminding you to dry the ingredients. Then salt were added into the mix, which we know from learning science in school, draws out moisture. Meaning the bosou, as the time goes on, is going to get watery anyway.

Here's what I think... Since I have absolutely zero experience on making bosou, I decided it's better to listen to the voice of experts, or people who have access to experts. When you think about it, if the bosou turned out bad because we simply will not be bothered to spend a few moments to dry the ingredients, think of how much money you wasted.

I had to raid my mother's kitchen cabinet when it was almost middle of the night to look for this glass jar. She bought this for me a long time ago for when I was in my kimchi-making craze. For fermenting food products, it's best to put them in a glass jar to avoid chemical from the plastic to leak into your food. After all, the reason you ferment food is to be able to store them for a long time.

It cost quite a lot to buy this glass jar. But my mother used to work in the Health Department and Ministry before she retired, so she totally support in the need to buying this for me.

But it you don't have glass jar, either get one or a plastic one would be fine. Do whatever makes you comfortable.

All I have to do now is to wait around two weeks for it to pickle before I finally can sink my teeth into it.

Okay. That's all the adventure to tell. See you next time with another story.