No more slime

I try to keep an open mind about ingredients that normally don’t appeal to me. Litób (blood cockles), okra, alugbati (Malabar/vine spinach): they’re slimy, a texture I am averse to. Still, I try to find ways of cooking them that minimizes that undesirable aspect. Failing that, as with litób — eh, too bad; at least I gave it a shot.

Until lately I had resisted eating lukót, the secretions of donsol (sea hare), which some call “sea spaghetti,” and others poop (actually, eggs in sacs). It is usually eaten raw with vinegar and spices, but it is also reportedly a good substitute for the usual terrestrial greens in tinowa. I take another look at it and pass. Maybe some other time, I tell myself.

Then I heard mention of frying lukót. Not so far-fetched if you think of it as a seaweed, as most tend to. Except it isn’t. We just like to think so because it is one more thing collected from the seafloor. According to my suki — it was her idea to make fritters — the cold months are the best time to forage for these noodle-like strands.

The most important thing one should remember when frying lukót is that it is loaded with water, so don a hazmat suit (if you have one) to avoid the crazy spattering that ensues. Anyway, there has to be a better way, right?

Right. And the most obvious method was to remove as much of the water as possible, i.e., dehydration. It just so happened to be raining for the third day in a row, so I used the oven instead. After blotting the lukót with paper towels, I lined a flat pan with parchment paper and on that distributed the “noodles” as flatly and evenly as possible. They cooked for an hour on the lowest heat that I could manage, then I switched off the oven and let them stay there until fully cooled.

They were not fully dried out, but I figured they were dry enough. For the batter, I took inspiration from Nora Daza’s for ukoy (shrimp fritters), a mix of three tablespoons cornstarch, two of flour, a quarter teaspoon of baking soda, an eighth of baking powder, and a teaspoon of garlic powder, stirred into beaten medium-size egg combined with a quarter cup of cold beer and a teaspoon of fish sauce, until smooth, whereupon the lukót was folded in. Tip: lukót is already salty, so go easy on the fish sauce (note that I didn’t put in salt). To be sure, fry a teaspoon of the mixture, then adjust to your taste.

The mixture was shaped into patties and fried in half an inch of neutral oil. More tips. You may think the patties thin, but they will puff up a bit, you’ll see, so don’t spoon in too much of the batter, and flatten a patty while you still can. Also, wait for the top to set before ladling hot oil over it, or bits will float away. Flip patties over and fry until golden on both sides. Dry on paper towel-lined plate and serve with ketchup or, better yet, tempura dip.

Lukót fritter turned out to be much better than I had hoped, crispy on the outside, moist inside. As for Ma, she said it tasted just like tortang bolináw. I will definitely do this again, preferably with chopped onion and tomato in the mix, plus chili flakes. I’m just waiting for my burn marks to clear up.