Cover Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
1 / 1
“Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin”: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo came together for a special two-night event that celebrated Filipino coastal cooking
Chef Miko Calo has always been clear about the kind of cooking she wants to explore. When the opportunity to collaborate with chef Josh Boutwood at his open-flame cooking restaurant Ember was put on the table, she knew exactly which direction to proceed in, drawing from her happy food memories growing up in Butuan.
“Because of Ember’s format, the wood fire reminded me of having sutukil at this one particular seaside restaurant growing up,” Calo explained. “When my family and I would drive to Cagayan de Oro or Iligan on the weekends, we would always stop at this restaurant along the way. They served all kinds of seafood, and they utilised all parts of the fish by preparing it in different ways—grilled, boiled or cured in vinegar.” This is known in the southern parts of the country as sutukil, which combines three different cooking methods of preparing fresh seafood—sugba (grilling over charcoal), tuwa (a light broth or stew that brings out the natural sweetness of the catch) and kilaw (fresh seafood cured in vinegar, citrus, and aromatics). The approach celebrates the purity of seafood while presenting how a single ingredient can be transformed through different techniques.
See also: Beyond calamansi: 5 Filipino citrus fruits you should know
Above The chefs and dear friends pose playfully: Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
Above Tuwa: Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
The chefs and dear friends pose playfully: Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
1 / 2
Their two-night culinary collaboration called “Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin” is not the first time the two have cooked together, but Boutwood expressed how it has led them to get to know each other better professionally. “I was really excited because we’d only worked together one night at a pop-up she organised during her residency at the Makati Shangri-La,” he admits. “That wasn’t enough to properly get to know each other on a culinary level. Obviously, we knew each other socially, but not in a culinary sense. So having the opportunity to invite Miko to Ember, a very eclectic, open-fire restaurant, felt like a great way for us to bring our culinary prowess together.”
Calo was very “persuasive” about what she wanted to do, introducing Boutwood to the concept of sutukil, which she loves and feels would be a good fit for their tandem. “She said, ‘This is what I want to do,’ and I just had to go along with it,” he expresses. “In our first conversation, she brought up sutukil, and I had never heard of it, which made it immediately intriguing for me. I saw it as the utilisation of a whole animal, or a whole fish, in her case. Once I understood what it was about, [I was in]. I’ve always been a strong advocate for using an animal in its most rewarding, yielding way, so sutukil naturally made sense for us, especially from the meat side.”
See also: Super Uncle Claypot brings Hong Kong-style comfort food to Poblacion
Above Kilaw: Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
Above Sugba: Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
Kilaw: Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
1 / 2
And that is how they developed the menu—seafood dishes (mostly the different parts of the tuna) for Calo, juxtaposed with Boutwood and team Ember’s contemporary meat executions. Calo took the tuna head and boiled it in ginger, lemongrass and malunggay to make a consommé, allowing the collagen to thicken the soup naturally while continuously clarifying the broth until it is transparent. She then took its fleshy parts, which she sliced and cured in bahal vinegar and coconut milk, finished with kabayawa, which is turning out to be a Calo signature move. Tuna roe is braised in aromatics, then usually stored and used as a condiment that Calo loves to spoon over hot rice, and so that is what she did to be served alongside the main dishes.
One of them is the grilled flying fish that the team carefully filleted and tweezed, sprayed with bangsi vinegar and served over a delicate beurre blanc, herb salad and garlic chips. Calo confesses how this is the dish—along with the kinilaw—that she is most proud of, and she sees herself offering this in different iterations down the line, “because the dish is representative of my cooking style.” She explains further that as she progresses in her career, she allows herself more freedom from the constraints of her training and culinary background. “I’ve started to lean more into my instincts when cooking and creating dishes,” she confesses. “I’ve stopped putting limitations on what and how I cook. For me, the most important things are sourcing good products and doing things well.”
See also: The future has officially arrived: Kyoto’s 2050 Coffee opens in Molito, Alabang
Above Chef Josh Boutwood chatting with guests about their sutukil menu
Above Miko Calo exploring the beauty of sutukil cooking
Chef Josh Boutwood chatting with guests about their sutukil menu
1 / 2
Boutwood himself is incredibly generous with his praise when asked what it was like working with Calo. “Working with Miko has probably been one of the easiest collaborations we’ve ever done. There’s been no stress, no pressure on timing and all the prep has been on point. The moment our doors open, everything’s ready to go. For me, that’s just beautiful. What she brings to the kitchen is a profound knowledge of local ingredients and techniques, and she interprets them in a very elegant, dare I say, feminine way.”
He follows her lead as he grills ox tripe to a crisp, serving the strips with a bright and herbaceous salad tossed in mint-labuyo vinaigrette. The ox tongue is double-cooked—first boiled and then smoked over embers—served with a creamy cauliflower purée, finished with more shaved cauliflower and pecorino Romano. It is not a proper meal at Ember without one of their famous steaks, this one a skirt steak cooked medium-rare to medium, and garnished with Chinese broccoli and M1, finished with a sprinkling of chopped hazelnuts. “I don’t focus on using purely Filipino ingredients—I like to mix it up a bit,” admits Boutwood. “What we’ve found is a combination of flavours that work very well together, but in a way that still feels distinctly neo-Filipino.”
Above Ox tripe salad: Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
Above Ox tongue: Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
Ox tripe salad: Nose to Tail, Gills to Fin: Josh Boutwood and Miko Calo's sutukil collaboration
1 / 2
The dinners sold out immediately, and Ember had to open one lunch to accommodate those on the waitlist. Boutwood, Calo and their teams made sure not to disappoint the eager diners and delivered a meal that is truly memorable. “I’m proud of everything I didn’t have to cook,” Boutwood jokes. “But seriously, I think the menu as a whole was very well balanced. The feedback from last night really showed that. For me, that balance is the best example of how our synergies in the kitchen came together: two very different, contrasting cooking styles meeting in the middle to create something cohesive. Honestly, that’s probably one of the best compliments I’ve ever been given.”
Topics
Jaclyn Clemente Koppe is a food and lifestyle writer, as well as a consultant to some of the country’s beloved food and beverage brands. Her passion for food and drink is only surpassed by her devotion to her family, most especially to her soulmate, Pepa the poodle.
