Pesang isda
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Read for freePesang isda is a Filipino fish broth with ginger and vegetables. It’s a popular home-cooked dish and is often served with rice.
The recipe requires boiling the fish in a ginger broth and aromatic vegetables. Cooking pesang isda is rather simple, but the result is a flavorful and healthy dish.
It’s much like a traditional boiled fish soup with bok choy, cabbage, sayote squash, and a topping of chopped green onions.
Traditional pesang isda is made with mudfish or red snapper fish.
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Origin
In a history of the dish as discussed by known food historian Doreen Hernandez, the Filipino term “pesa” comes from the Chinese term “peq-sa-hi” with “peq” and “sa” standing for “broth” and “hi” for fish. Literally, then, the term would mean “plain boiled fish.”
And that’s exactly how we Filipinos have done pesang isda as well; a stewed fish-based dish!
But it wasn’t always like that. In ancient times, our ancestors cooked the dish with rice cakes, making it more of a porridge-type of pesang isda.
The use of rice cakes as one of the ingredients was mentioned in the earliest recorded Filipino literature, the “Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala” (Dictionary of the Tagalog Language) by Juan de Noceda and Pedro de San Buenaventura.
Check out our new cookbook
Bitemybun's family recipes with complete meal planner and recipe guide.
Try it out for free with Kindle Unlimited:
Read for free
Joost Nusselder, the founder of Bite My Bun is a content marketer, dad and loves trying out new food with Japanese food at the heart of his passion, and together with his team he's been creating in-depth blog articles since 2016 to help loyal readers with recipes and cooking tips.
