Raw Fish

Kinilaw is one of the earliest forms of Filipino cooking: the freshest of fish immersed ever so briefly in vinegar, emerging neither raw nor cooked but transfigured by sourness. The cultural historian Doreen Gamboa Fernandez describes an even more primal kinilaw in her 1998 essay collection Tikim: live fish flopped in the bottom of a boat, swiftly deboned, and simply rinsed in the surrounding sea for a touch of salt. Here I rely on salt and lime juice as a souring ag