You are cordially invited to the opening of the COVE

And your favorite food columnist gladly accepted last October 20, the summons to join the inauguration at the Cove, a live seafood restaurant and oyster bar at the Maribago Bluewater Beach Resort, phone (032) 2325411, www. bluewater.com.ph).

But what is the importance of live seafood as the primary raw material for cooking? Let us take fish as our example. Fish deteriorates as soon as it dies and many fish may die while still in the net or shortly right after catching. In fact, fish is the most perishable of all food commodities! There are about 550 commercial species and about 2,000 varieties of fish in the Philippines. So many perishable items and for fisheries students, so many fish to study!

Back to the books for a more scholarly discussion about fishes and luckily your food columnist has a very, excuse me, modest library for reference and one of the books in my collection is The Science of Philippine Foods by Arroyo Staub. So, onwards with Fish 101, and today, as we study fish, my ever loyal followers can have their recess anytime.

The edible portion of fish is the muscle tissue (myotomes), connective tissue (myocommata) and the fat. Some smaller fish are entirely edible and for many Filipinos, almost all parts of the fish can be eaten including the head which is rich in collagenous tissue.

Unfortunately, many Westerners discard the head because they do not want their victim–no, their meal – to be staring back at them! The Chinese, on the other hand, consider the cheek muscles to be the best part of the fish.

 Fresh fish has a characteristic sweet meaty flavor which is due to the presence of isosinic acid and smell of fresh fish is "fresh seaweedy."

When the fish dies, fish enzymes called cathepsins are released—goodbye isosinic acid and hello hypoxanthine. The latter makes spoiled fish bitter in taste. Add the trimethylamine, and you have the "characteristic odour of stale fish which is ammoniacal."

Fish contains the amino acid histidine which is converted into histamine by the presence of bacteria. Those pesky microbes seem to be everywhere.  Histamine and histamine-like substances called vasoactive amines can trigger symptoms that mimic allergy.

Your favorite food columnist can detect the presence of this substance even in minute amounts (before the rest of his dinner mates can detect it) and histamine causes a faint itchy tingle sensation in my mouth. I am thankful for this extra sensitivity of my palate since this has protected me in my numerous food adventurisms in the past.

When histamine is present, always present na gyud na, unlike my beloved followers who have gone into recess after reading all these scientific words!  Histamine is not destroyed by cooking, freezing, curing or canning. Eating fish with high levels of histamine can result in histamine fish poisoning (HFP, also known as scombroid fish poisoning) and if the patient is unattended, well…goodbye.

During the inauguration at the Cove, I had my usual share of appetizers like the seared foie gras with apricot-white wine reduction, pescado al natural, Mexican taco salad and the Oriental duck salad in egg noodle. Then I moved to the more serious of business of eating all those delicious rock lobsters, lamb kebabs (with mint sauce), a small piece of roast calf and even a smaller piece of  barbecued pork ribs (honest!).

A tougher assignment was still waiting and I had to gather more courage to face the freshest seafood and the Japanese delicacies. With my fifth glass of white wine, I began to savour the steamed shell fish like the blue crabs, tahong and prawns. This was followed by calculated moves to taste one each of the assorted sushi and two pieces of the roasted eel sushi.

Switching to a red wine, I moved to the tepanyaki section for the tender cuts of beef. I began to notice that this was one of the few celebrations that I have attended in Cebu when food and drinks seemed to be pouring endlessly.

Taking a breather after a small piece of dessert, I started to admire the various salt-water fin fish and shell fish inside huge aquariums. Even the sea vegetables we relish in Cebu, the lato and guzo, were also placed inside the water tanks. That’s the brand of service the Cove provides its customers!