Comments on: Tinolang Manok / Chicken Soup with Unripe Papaya & Chili Leaves

By: angie

angie — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 02:30:03 +0000

to mommy
i substitute moringa (malunggay) leaves or spinach if chili leaves is not available in the market. Those leaves are nutritious too.

By: mommy

mommy — Fri, 23 Sep 2016 17:07:25 +0000

Aside from Chili leaves, what green goes well for Tinola? Our family always crave for Filipino dishes even though we’ve been residing in Toronto for years now.

By: farida

farida — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 17:20:43 +0000

@Footloose, talking about monitor lizard, I was in Palawan a couple of months ago with family. And we were at the underground river and I saw signs not to feed the monitor lizards. I guess these are indigenous to the Philippines too. Scary! I know when I was in Badian, last year, a friend saw one great big lizard. Not sure if it’s from the same family.

By: Joanie

Joanie — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:44:12 +0000

Tinola for me is a comfort food. This is the only Filipino dish that my bread/potato/pasta loving kids eat. My son especially can eat 2 bowls of rice with lots of sabaw :)

By: Footloose

Footloose — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 12:28:10 +0000

In the very last chapter of Krakatoa, the author visited the new island that emerged at the site of the old disappeared volcano to put a fine finis to his book. The newborn island had been quickly colonized by flora and fauna from the neighbouring islands which afforded him a scary encounter with a six foot monitor lizard, also called bayawak in Indonesian. Reminded me of a classmate in high school with that exact family moniker who was constantly taunted by my other classmates with “dahong sili.” Boys can be subtle, cruel and creative all at the same time.

By: Marketman

Marketman — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 01:38:37 +0000

I re-read Noli a few years ago and one of the descriptions of putting a still live fish into the boiling pot was quite memorable. I can just imagine how fresh that must have tasted… For eons people have been obsessed with their food…

By: millet

millet — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 00:29:52 +0000

i don’t eat the meat in tinola, just the broth and vegetables, and for me, the best part about tinola is that the leftovers get to be arroz caldo. when i was young and chickens were bought live in the market and slaughtered at home, my mom made sure to save the chicken’s blood in a saucer. she’d put some uncooked rice over the top, and when the tinola was simmering, dump the now-gelled blood into it. that was a real treat for us kids, in addition to the chicken’s liver, and any unhatched eggs inside the fowl if it was a hen.

By: joe jj

joe jj — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 15:39:49 +0000

That portion of Noli where Pedro devoured the food prepared for the children was as heart wrenching but a complete antithesis of Valjean’s final act. Both were fathers, although Valjean just a surrogate, representing the worst and the best in humanity.

By: Footloose

Footloose — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 13:42:09 +0000

Chicken Tinola came up in Noli right at the opening chapter, not exactly as a restorative but exalted enough as dinner starter at Capitan Tiago’s banquet served to a cross-section of Manila’s power elite of the time. Further on, we get a glimpse of a few other local dishes at a picnic with the young ladies talking about suitable methods of cooking particular types of fish. Then at the tragic closing chapter, a combo that anyone of us would find great for breakfast nowadays, not the wild boar jerky that Pilosopong Tacio gave poor Sisa from time to time but grilled dried tawilis partnered with tomatoes that she readied because it was her sons’ favourite.

By: Natie

Natie — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 12:50:58 +0000

No wonder you got better fast.