Cadiz Stages ‘Buriring’ Cook Tilt

Everyone’s free to taste

Cadiz City is staging a unique cooking competition using only “buriring” (pufferfish) as main ingredient on Friday, September 5.

To be held at the Cadiz City Park starting at 9 a.m., this culinary tilt, highlighting one of Cadiz’s sustained blessings – the buriring – will showcase two styles in cooking of the said fish – the traditional and innovative.

The 22 villages in Cadiz were clustered into eight, and each group, composed of five to seven members,must showcase their culinary skills in coming up with “buriring” dishes that will offer a so-called “explosion of taste” that visitors or tourists will surely like and love so much.

Julie Grace Dominguez, city’s tourism officer and in-charge of the “buriring” cook-off, said in the traditional category, contestants are obliged to use either the “libas” leaves or santol fruits as souring ingredients as well as butter or margarine to provide a fat-soluble flavor.

While in the innovative category, each competiting group is free to cook and present “buriring” dish/ dishes not familiar yet among Cadizen̈os.

After the judging, spectators are allowed to enjoy a free taste of all the “buriring” dishes to be showcased in the competition, Dominguez said.

“Buriring” has been considered as a sustained “blessing” for Cadiz as it appears en masse within the city’s waters every time “tiempo muerto” (dead season in the sugar industry) starts in July.

Dominguez said the link between “buriring” and “tiempo muerto” is quite “mysterious”, but it’s already a fact that cannot be ignored.

Thus, the upcoming cooking showdown will not only showcase “buriring” dishes as part of Cadiz food heritage, and also of Negros’ slow food, but also to celebrate the yearly bounty that this non-poisonous species of pufferfish is bringing in to Cadiz, she said.

Cadiz Mayor Salvador Esclante, Jr, expressed elation with the upcoming “buriring” cooking competition.

He wants to see scores of visitors from other towns and cities in the province to witness, and of course, taste their “buriring” dishes that strengthen Cadiz’s positioning in the Ark of Taste soonest.

Escalante assured everyone that “buriring” is safe to eat as it is edible, and it has no potent poison nerves as what others believe.

“Believe me. Just come, and eat our ‘boriring’ as it tastes like ‘heaven’,” the mayor said.

Meanwhile, Dominguez said winners in this “buriring” cooking tilt will also bring home cash prizes.

The grand winner will go home with P10,000 while the second and third placers will be prized P7,000 and P5,000, respetively.

While the five non-winning groups will be awarded with P1,000 each as consolation prize.* (CC)