one filipino dish a week

I’m a big liar! Intermittent? I know I know. But I’m back and fighting jetlag. I had an amazing time in the Philippines and have a lot of things to talk about. So now it’s food time…

First day back and a noodle dish? No, no, no, my friends, this is an Andrew-Zimmern-bizarre-foods-type of a dish. This was one of the first things that I ate when I got there. Not necessarily because I was looking for it. I’ve had it maybe once before and that was a long long time ago. Before it was presented in front of me I have forgotten about lukot and wouldn’t have been able to tell you what it was. This was served to us by The Girl’s Aunt, who is a great cook. I thought it was a noodle dish at first until I started eating it and quickly realized that it wasn’t regular noodles.

So what is lukot really? The word lukot in Bisaya means to roll. I guess it looks like it’s rolled up into a ball of thread? Digging a little deeper with questions and a little internet probing I found that this is what comes out of dunsol or sea hare. It pretty much is a sea snail looking thing (not pretty looking at all). Not sure really as to why this comes out of the sea hare. I’ve gathered two explanations one is that lukot is poop and the other is that it is a secretion as a defense mechanism OR maybe they poop in their defense. Great! You don’t really see this too far away from the wet fish markets. You won’t find these in a menu at a restaurant in Cebu City or in a supermarket (none that I’ve seen at least).

So what does it taste like? Honestly, it doesn’t taste much of anything. However, it has a gelatinous texture to it if you put a big wad of it in your mouth. I ate this up in blissfully ignorant of its poopiness. You can prepare this kinilaw or just like we had it in a soup. I have to say though, the soup, was amazing! It is how a seafood soup should taste like. You can smell and taste the sea with each higop (slurp) of the soup. The tahong (mussels) and lukot were the main ingredients with a little bit of tomato and scallions. This was certainly an excellent start to a food trip.

Eat Filipino Food!