Solsona town in Ilocos Norte has just celebrated its annual Gameng Festival (gameng is treasure) that showcased among other products native food and delicacies which can be labeled kind of "exotic" because of their rarity and/or uniqueness in that particular Ilokano town.
Common black snails or mollusk abundant in rivers, creeks, irrigation canals, rice paddies, ponds is great as a dinengdeng of sort or as a soup with lots of tomatoes, onions and ginger. And with baraniw or lemon grass.
One kind of snail, the leddeg (Angulyagra oxytropis), the other common one is bisukol, is usually cooked with baraniw. This black snail has a bittery taste in its tail, where its intestines lie (the bisukol is not) part which is preferred by some true Ilokano snail "gourmands."
Here, I chanced upon some freshly picked pond leddegs being sold by roadside vendors one Sunday morning, I immediately bought three glassfuls (PhP10 per glassful), it has been years since my last leddeg consumption:
Wash the leddeg throughly, rinse it for several times to discard dirt:
Firstly, boil the usual ingredients, with a little bugguong (some don't want bugguong and use patis or just plain salt instead):
Put in the leddeg, boil for a few minutes, and then put in some baraniw stalks and simmer:
Put off fire immediately, don't overcook the leddeg or its tiny meat will shrink or "kumuttong" (become "thin"):
Serve hot and begin sucking out the sweet and bittery black morsel.
The proper way to eat leddeg is you crack open its tail so air can pass when you suck from its lip or mouth the meat out.
Dinengdeng a bulong marunggay a nasagpawan iti kaggo.
Kaggo is a big clam found in brackish and muddy waters in Cagayan, where rivers or swamps meet with the sea or sea water, usually under or along nipa trees. Also called kappo in other places, it is the same as the lukan of the Tagalogs. But they're more abundant and popular on the notherrn Cagayan towns along the coast, like Sanchez Mira, Pamplona, Abulug, Ballesteros, Aparri, Buguey and Sta. Teresita. Meanwhile, there's another shellfish popular in Cagayan, called karibuyo, a sea clam gathered along the seashore of same coastal towns including Claveria, Gonzaga and Sta. Ana. [source]
Kaggo can be made into a savory soup or stew, boiled/blanched, grilled, or simply into a kilawen or eaten raw right from the shell dipped in calamansi juice just like that of oysters. And besides its usual preparation, it's also a perfect sagpaw or add on to vegetable dishes like pinakbet and dinengdeng.
For this dinengdeng, I picked the most tender leaves from my marunggay tree--marunggay is perfect for that savory solo dinengdengs. And prepared the kaggo ingredient--I shucked the clam meat out of the live kaggo, including the salty and tasty "broth" inside the shell:
The most tender marunggay paired with kaggo meat/soup:
The marunggay and kaggo ready:
Put in the kaggo "broth" and some water in a pan and boil. Put in some bugguong and onion slices. For a more delicious and sweet dinengdeng soup, I added kabatiti. Boil for some minutes to cook the kabatiti, then put in the kaggo meat, quickly boil and simmer....
....then put in the marunggay leaves...
....boil a little, then put off fire immediately to prevent overcooking of the marunggay, its done.
Serve the dinengdeng hot and steaming:
That soup... so tasty, so delicious, so insanely good!
Unnok or ginukan (Delillia sp.)is a freshwater mollusk or bivalve that grows in rivers, it is believed to be endemic in the Cagayan River especially along the towns of Lal-lo and Camalaniugan (unnok is abundant as well in the Abulug River), although it can be usually found in rivers close to the coastlines (deltas) in Northern Luzon. But nowadays unnok is becoming rare in Cagayan itself, reportedly because of the ongoing quarrying/dredging activities (actually mining of magnetite or black sand which is reportedly wreaking environmental havoc) along the Cagayan River which affect not just unnok but also the kabibi (Batissa violacea), another important shellfish endemic in the area (and other shells and fish, like the rare and expensive ludong). Quarrying/dredging/mining of sand in the river disturbs the habitat of these shells endangering their very existence.
This is somehow true because I myself rarely can find unnok for sale in the wet markets, whereas in the past years it's sold in abundance in regular market days.
And imagine my pleasant surprise when I found this in the Allacapan (Cagayan) market and was told that it came all the way from Laoag City (Ilocos Norte)! The vendor said unnok is almost a thing of the past in Cagayan, it's not readily available anymore as it were, and she's not exaggerating, I guess. I bought the whole remaining lot for fifty pesos:
We made it into a soup with lots of tomatoes and onions, and some bugguong juice to taste. The broth is so savory with a hint of sweet and sour tomato goodness.
The tiny bits of flesh has a distinct taste and texture among other freshwater shells that makes unnok a kind of delicacy, especially now that it's diminishing and becoming a rarity.
And of course, unnok meat is also prized because it's great to be made into a bugguong (salted). The vendor also sells bugguong nga unnok at one hundred fifty pesos a bottle (yes, it's that expensive). But I was able to convince her for a hundred bucks plus the fresh shells, so this is it, I got one, it's been years since the last time I saw bugguong nga unnok being sold.
It's perfect with a squeeze of calamansi and it's a great appetizer, just like bugguong nga ipon.
What an opportunity to once again blessed with this bounty, now that some greedy people are destroying nature that nurtures its very existence... What a pity that future generations might not enjoy this delicacy anymore, when it's already extinct in the Cagayan River...
Meanwhile, here's a video by Youtuber mjrfmpaul123 of unnok (ginukan) being prepared as a kind of "salad":
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