For my Sunday market ritual at San Miguel, I found several varieties of shrimp among others.  Since my budget will not allow the so, so enticing lukon or tiger prawns (P550 per kilo), I settled on the white shrimps beside it, which looked equally fresh anyway. 

Balaskugay.  That’s what the shrimp vendor called it (I should get her name next time).  It is cultured in tab-ang, or brackish water, growing in shrimp ponds in  Carles.  I got 1/4 kilo for P60.00 or P240.00 per kilo.  That’s relatively cheap considering it would fall on the large category and it was still very fresh. 

Marketing tip:  For really fresh shrimps, go to the wet market early, say at 6-7 a.m.  By noontime, the shrimps are already tired from all the exposure, that if you are sensitive to them, you’ll end up with an itchy throat.

There’s another variety which looks darker.  That’s also good.  Will have to ask  manang for its local name next time.

The balaskugay I bought ended up as soft and light tempura.

My apologies.  Pix of balaskugay will still have to be downloaded from cp and uploaded to the net.