Chicken Tinola::生姜味鶏肉スープ

(Japanese to follow later)
Tinola in Tagalog is a soup-based dish in the Philippines. Traditionally, this dish is cooked with chicken, wedges of green papaya, and chili pepper leaves, in broth flavored with ginger, onions and fish sauce. A common variant substitutes pork for chicken, chayote instead of papaya, or moringa leaves known as marungay or malunggay, instead of pepper leaves. It is best served with fresh chicken.

However, most of these vegetables are not available in supermarkets in Japan. Although you can buy papaya and chayote from Ueno Asian Market or from Filipino stores, it will cost you 300yen-600yen for only 1 papaya.



So, instead of using papaya/chayote, I am using turnip or "かぶ(kabu)" in Japanese. I am using the turnip as substitute for papaya and it's leaves as substitute for chili pepper as the leaves has bitter taste just like pepper/malungay leaves. On summer, I buy young pepper plant from home center and grow them in a planter and use the leaves for Tinola and Sauted green beans (Mongo).


Anyway, I am writing here my own version of Tinola recipe. Since I don't measure when I cook, I dont know the accurate measurement of each ingredient :(


Chicken Tinola

Ingredients (approximately):
1/2 kilo chicken (breast or thighs or wings).
3 pcs turnips ( cut 1 turnip into 4pcs, cut the leaves of 1pc turnips 3-4cm long - only with stem part like in the Tinola picture above)
4 cups of chicken broth (4cups of water + 3tbs of "gara su-pu")
1/4 of the ginger pack sold in supermarket(roughly chopped)
2 head garlic (minced) <- reduce if you dont like garlic but garlic sold in Japan has mild taste, so Im using 2pcs and besides we like garlic.
1/2 onion (diced)<- the white or green onion available in Japanese supermarket
1 1/2 tablespoons oil (abura)
salt and pepper to taste

(Below)Gara Su-pu and zero Calorie Oil



Procedure:
1.In a casserole, heat oil and saute' garlic, onion and ginger
2.Add the chicken, let the color of the chicken changed a bit then add broth.
3.Bring to boil and lower fire, let simmer until chicken is cooked.
4.Pour in salt and pepper to taste.
5.Add in turnips and turnips leaves (the hard stem part), allow to cook.
6.Add the remaining turnip greens, then turn off the heat and covered the pan.
Serve hot .