nabaraniwan a leddeg, black snails soup with lemon grass

Nabaraniwan a leddeg.

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.

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