Cadiz stages ‘buriring’ cook tilt; everyone’s free to taste

CADIZ City in Negros Occidental is staging a unique cooking competition using only buriring (pufferfish) as the main ingredient on Friday, Sept. 5.

To be held at the Cadiz City Park starting at 9 a.m., the culinary tilt highlights one of the city’s sustained blessings—the buriring—and will showcase both traditional and innovative cooking styles.

The city’s 22 villages were clustered into eight groups, and each group, composed of five to seven members, must prepare buriring dishes promising an “explosion of taste” that visitors and tourists will surely enjoy.

Julie Grace Dominguez, the city’s tourism officer and organizer of the buriring cook-off, said in the traditional category, contestants are required to use either libas leaves or santol fruits as souring ingredients, as well as butter or margarine for added flavor.

In the innovative category, each group is free to create buriring dishes not yet familiar to Cadizeños.

After the judging, spectators will be allowed to enjoy a free tasting of all the buriring dishes prepared in the competition, Dominguez said.

Buriring has long been considered a blessing for Cadiz as it appears en masse in city waters every July, coinciding with tiempo muerto (the dead season in the sugar industry).

Dominguez said the link between buriring and tiempo muerto is “mysterious,” but it is already a fact locals embrace.

She added that the showdown will not only highlight buriring as part of Cadiz’s food heritage and Negros’ slow food movement, but also celebrate the yearly bounty this nonpoisonous species of pufferfish brings to the city.

Cadiz Mayor Salvador Escalante Jr. expressed elation with the upcoming buriring cooking competition.

He said he expects visitors from other towns and cities in the province to witness and taste buriring dishes that strengthen Cadiz’s bid for inclusion in the Ark of Taste.

Escalante assured everyone that buriring is safe to eat, stressing it has no poisonous toxins as commonly believed.

“Believe me. Just come, and eat our buriring as it tastes like heaven,” the mayor said.

Dominguez said winners of the buriring cook-off will also bring home cash prizes.

The grand winner will receive PHP 10,000, while the second and third placers will get PHP 7,000 and PHP 5,000, respectively.

The five nonwinning groups will receive PHP 1,000 each as consolation prizes.