Tinolang Manok

The Filipino chicken soup built on a broth of bruised ginger and fish sauce, with wedges of green papaya and a handful of chilli leaves thrown in at the end

Origin: Manila & Luzon, Philippines

From the journey of Ginger.

Tinola is a method before it is a dish. The word comes from tinula, to boil something in broth, and what makes the broth is ginger: a thumb of it, bruised flat and fried in the fat until the kitchen smells of it, before the chicken and the water go in. There is no coconut milk, no tomato, no souring agent. The seasoning is patis, fish sauce, and the result is clear, pale, and hot in the throat. The vegetable is green papaya, cut into wedges and cooked until it turns from opaque white to faintly translucent, and the leaves are dahon ng sili, the leaves of the chilli plant, or malunggay, moringa. Chayote is the common substitute for the papaya and starts a fight every time: the two behave similarly in the pot, and a great many Filipinos hold that only one of them is correct, without agreeing on which. The dish carries a piece of national literature. In the third chapter of José Rizal's Noli Me Tángere, published in 1887, Capitán Tiago announces the tinola at a Manila dinner; the ladle brings Padre Dámaso a bare neck and a tough wing amongst the lumps of squash, whilst Crisóstomo Ibarra, newly home from Europe, is given the thigh and the breast. The friar mashes his squash, tastes the soup, drops his spoon noisily, and pushes the plate away. Rizal makes a whole argument about who was being served what in the colony, and he makes it with a bowl of chicken soup.

Ingredients

Soup

  • 1.2 kg chicken, jointed into small pieces on the bone
  • 2 tbsp neutral oil
  • 60 g fresh ginger, peeled, sliced thickly, and bruised
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 onion, sliced
  • 3 tbsp fish sauce (patis)
  • 1.5 l water or light chicken stock
  • 500 g green (unripe) papaya, peeled, seeded, and cut into thick wedges

To Finish

  • 2 handfuls chilli leaves (dahon ng sili) or moringa leaves, or young spinach
  • 1 tsp black peppercorns, cracked

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a deep pan and fry the ginger, garlic, and onion over a medium heat for four or five minutes, until the ginger is fragrant and the onion soft.
  2. Add the chicken and turn it in the aromatics until it has lost its raw colour, then pour in the fish sauce and let it sizzle for a minute.
  3. Pour in the water, bring to a boil, skim, then lower the heat and simmer covered for 25 minutes.
  4. Add the papaya wedges and cook for a further 10 minutes, until they are tender and have turned slightly translucent.
  5. Stir in the leaves and the cracked pepper, cook for one minute more, and serve in deep bowls with rice, with extra fish sauce and calamansi on the table.

Notes

Chayote (sayote) replaces the papaya weight for weight and is what most of the Visayas uses; the argument about which is correct is older than anyone now having it. Chilli leaves are sold frozen in Filipino shops. They are mild, the heat being in the fruit and not the leaf.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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