Food Trip: Chicken Tinola



Photographed by: Lea Lei
http://hennypepper.blogspot.com



Chicken Tinola

            Tinola is a Filipino chicken dish.  Traditionally it is cooked with lemon grass.  The lemon grass gives it a really good relaxing aroma.  However, lemon grass is not always available in our local grocery store.  In my case, I would have to drive to Seafood City in Seattle just to get one. 

            In addition to lemon grass, green papaya and leaves of chili or dahon ng sili (capsicum frutescens) some of the traditional ingredients.  This doesn’t mean though that everyone cooks tinola with these ingredients.  Even in the Philippines, people cook it using other leafy vegetables like pechay or bok choy.  I remember my mom would cook tinola with malunggay or Moringa Oleifera.  It is another leafy vegetable that is pack with nutrients like calcium, vitamin c, and potassium.  It contains three times more iron than spinach; ounce per ounce, it has more calcium than 2 glasses of milk, the vitamin c of 7 oranges and potassium of 3 bananas.  It has 4 times more vitamin A than carrots.  These and more!  If you would like to learn more about its nutritional value, visit http://www.edlagman.com/moringa .  I do know that sometimes moringa or malunggay is available in some farmer’s market in California or sometimes Seafoof City. 

            If there is one ingredient that should not be taken out, it would be ginger.  It is the ginger that gives tinola its unique taste.  This healthy concoction is a good alternative to your usual stew on cold evening or day.  In my case I prefer its warm broth in the morning for breakfast instead of coffee.  Since in this dish you use a good amount of ginger, the broth is just as good as fresh ginger tea.  It is commonly eaten with rice but who’s to say you can’t enjoy it by itself? J

            What I will share with you is my tinola recipe using green leafy vegetables that are commonly available in my local grocery store- spinach.  It’s a good alternative.  You can even add potatoes, if you want.  Before, I tried brussels sprout and its nutty taste blends well with ginger.  In my entire recipe (or even my other recipes), I never use MSG or any seasonings that have MSG in them.  It’s a personal choice because I believe that MSG is not good for you.  They’re saying there isn’t really enough study that it can cause cancer but in my opinion, if I could make my food taste good using natural ingredients (without it) the better.  I hope you enjoy the recipe! J

Chicken Tinola (2 servings)

Ingredients:

2 chicken thighs (you can also use chicken breast)

1 tablespoon of vinegar

1 small onion chopped into fourths

1/3 cup freshly sliced ginger

Spinach  

Salt and pepper

Procedure:

1.       Trim the fats off of the chicken.  If you prefer, you can remove the skin.

2.      Place the chicken and vinegar in a deep pan.  Turn the heat to medium high and let the vinegar evaporate.  Don’t stir nor cover the pan.  Just flip the chicken once you noticed that one side has turned opaque.   The vinegar takes that raw chicken smell or what the Filipinos call “lansa”.

3.      Once the vinegar evaporated, you’ll notice that the natural oil from the chicken comes out especially if you didn’t trim the skin off during preparation.  Add, the ginger and onion and sauté the ingredients together with the chicken, then cover the pan.  At this point, I usually leave it the way it is for 5 minutes.  This way, the chicken absorbs the ginger and onion taste.  Then I sprinkle a little bit of salt.  Cover the pan again and leave it for another 5 minutes.  If during preparation, you trimmed the skin off, you might want to add a little canola oil.

4.      Add 2 1/3 cups of water.  Turn the heat to high until the water boils.

5.      Once the water boils, reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the chicken is fully cooked or even longer (in this case reduce the heat to low).  Check the taste.  Add salt and pepper if necessary.

6.      Lastly, add the spinach.  I usually buy baby spinach that still have their stems and dunk the leaves and stems altogether.  Turn the heat off and cover.  The heat inside is enough to cook the spinach.