Melo (Surigaonon - Pa-Isan, Visayan - Binga)

Melo (Melocorona) broderipii (Gray, in Griffith & Pidgeon 1834)

A large, heavy, globose shell, with a low spire and a smooth, mammillate protoconch; body whorl large, with an elongate-ovate aperture, a thin, arcuate outer lip, a wide, shallow siphonal notch, and a heavy fasciolar ridge; sculptured with a shoulder row of numerous short, open, slightly curved spines, columella with 4 plaits; colour pale orange-yellow with lighter banding and a bright orange aperture; possibly a subspecies of M. aethiopica which has fewer spines, and a protoconch which is sunken below the level of the spines; reaches 350mm. Locally sold as "M. aethiopica." Juvenile specimens have brown streaks.

DISTRIBUTION: Sporadically found throughout the Philippines.

And then weigh it, if you think about it. (Actually we forgot, but it was about 1 kilo – at P40, that was about 80¢ per kilo - somewhat less expensive than prime steak – all prime protein). This was immature, not a large specimen (only 7½" long). Adults reach twice that length.

We dropped it into boiling water to scald it, soften it, and let us de-shell it in one piece. Being amateurs, we don’t know the craft of extracting a ‘shellfish’ from its shell while it’s still live and fresh.

There’s a knack to doing that; it’s easily acquired, and you can do it almost subconsciously, just like you can drive a car at the same time as thinking about something completely different.

 It's the kind of simple technical act an Early Human (who was making intricate hand axes for a million years on end from 1.4 Mya) could do very easily.

Then I allowed my research assistant to chop it, and some fresh vegetables, into bite size pieces. Teaching her how to chop ‘a la julienne’ or whatever, for high-class cuisine is obviously complete nonsense while we (or she, rather) has to cook in a kitchen like a cowshed.

But she did a good job.

Melo, cooked a la minute in a kaja (wok) with some fresh vegetables tastes quite wonderful. I can't honestly say the actual flesh tastes wonderful; it has very little taste at all. Somewhat like chicken, it has to be jollied up a little. The main foot muscle has a compact, smooth texture, and the brown inside part tastes like tenderly cooked liver.

It’s even better when you keep a little bit aside as a taster – kinilaw – raw,  just ‘cooked’ in vinegar and spices, fresh as the early morning tide.

Melo (baler shells) live in the shallow lagoon, browsing on Zostera sea-grass (or whatever grows along with it), and being large, is very easy to find.

A whole lot easier (just floating or wading around the shallows) than organising your mates to go out and run after a gazelle, or whatever. When our ancestors left the coast to go up rivers and into the highlands, they left a ‘Golden Age’ of easy life and easy foodstuffs behind them.

Angaria - Takdagon

Angaria delphinus (Linne, 1758)

A solid, black-coloured, heavy shell, with almost flat spire whorls and a large, ovate body whorl sculptured with coarse spiral cords which may exhibit irregularly curved spines of varying lengths; aperture ovate, smooth and nacreous silver within; umbilicus wide and open; reaches around 80mm; extremely variable with several forms being recognized:

DISTRIBUTION: Throughout the Philippines, except the form melanacantha which is only found in Palawan

As a shell collector some years ago, I found the Angaria shells in General Luna’s lagoon very, very boring. Angaria shells, in calm, deep water, come in a variety of beautiful colours, with flowery shoulder spines. The common, plain (or even ugly) ones that are abundant in General Luna’s lagoon live in a typhoon zone – they are constantly battered by wave, wind, and current, and they don’t have a chance to grow any fancy bits, or the urge to develop beautiful colours. Angariae have a remarkable range of depths and for forms for seashells, and, if I still had the devotion to shells I once had, I might even try to find out what they eat and how they live.

But I’m no Jane Goodall – at least chimpanzees were interesting – watching a snail feed is just a bit less fascinating than watching paint dry.

So, when Nitang came around with a bucketful of shelled Angaria the other day, I first said no; and then, remembering I am ‘researching’, I bought 2 ‘vasos’ – two glasses for a dollar. They are an amazing combination of blue-green colours, not my favourite of food colours, and I didn’t know how they would taste.

But I remembered a long-ago recipe for ‘Escargots a la Bourguignonne’ which involved garlic, butter, herbs, and so on, and instructed my research assistant to prepare something like 

And I have to admit, she did me proud. ‘Escargots’ in the average French restaurant are only eatable because they are strange – they taste like little bits of scorched rubber, plus greasy garlic. What I got were GOOD – a little salad of kinilaw Takdagon, and a main course of juicy, delicious Angaria delphinus (Linne, 1758) cooked in ‘Herbes de Provence’ (dried, sadly), fresh-frozen New Zealand butter, and, an inspired invention by my research assistant, a scattering of ‘Formaggio Pasta’ (a locally-imported American- manufactured imitation of Parmigiano), as a topping for 'Spaghetti a la Takdagon'. 

For an instant, eating this dish, I felt I was back in Venice, eating fresh seafood straight out of the sewage outfalls of the Adriatic. 

But this was incomparably better. There are no sewage outfalls between Siargao Island and Los Angeles, and these were fresh, fresh, fresh.

I am much more interested in Angaria now than I was when I fancied myself as a ‘conchologist’.

Sihi & Pasayan

Sihi    

Nerita (Ritena) undata Linne, 1758

Shell medium sized, globose, solid, with a short spire;  sculptured with numerous spiral cords and weakly striated grooves; columellar pad with heavy folds, columella with 4 strong teeth, labial lip with numerous fine denticles, the upper two largest; usually dark coloured with paler axial streaks or banding; aperture white with a lemon tint in the upper apertural area; reaches 40mm.

DISTRIBUTION: Throughout the Philippines.

Pasayan

Freshwater prawns come from Tawin-Tawin, just up the way from General Luna, in the little Banlayan river estuary.  I have seen the women coming down from there for years, selling prawns and mud crabs around the town (mostly to the few foreigners, since the townspeople can’t afford them). Apparently Charlito Plaza has an extensive estuarine fish farm up there, which must be worth investigating. (Well, now I've done that - see Mangroves)

Anyway, neither of these two items are really very culinarily interesting. Tropical prawns, however large (and these are small) are just not to be compared with their Atlantic coldwater cousins in taste or texture (or price). And winkles are just winkles.

So my research assistant did her very best, and made a delicious soup , followed by a dish of poached shrimps and winkles. Not bad, really.

Alimango – Mud Crab, Mangrove Crab (Scylla sp) 

These big, fat crabs are grown in the same estuarine fish ponds as the freshwater shrimp, but are much more expensive (at P200 - $4 a kilo). Absolutely no more cooking than steaming for 10-15 minutes is required (even my research assistant can do it).

I much prefer the female crabs (babaje) to the male ones (layake) because they are usually fat with coral-red eggs.

(Wild female crabs or jennies are banned in certain politically-correct countries, like Australia, but I feel no guilt in enjoying ‘tame’ ones from fish ponds).

The female has a much wider ‘tail plate’ than the male, as you can see from the picture.

*My research assistant is (was) really quite a good cook, but we just had an employer/employee misunderstanding, when she over-boiled my breakfast egg and burned the toast. When I protested mildly, she shot back that she would burn my eggs forever, if I didn’t stop complaining.

So I promised her full billing rights - here she is, having her breakfast - peanuts, of course.

My thanks to Carlos and Fely Leobrera, and F. J. Springsteen, who wrote and published "Shells of the Philippines" - a wonderful book that accompanied me on many shell-collecting expeditions - for the shell descriptions above.

The book, now sea-stained, foxed, and a bit mouldy, still has pride of place on my bookshelf. Anyone who could update it, and re-publish a new edition would have my and many other conchologists' undying gratitude.