A Scientist in the Kitchen

Tinola is a dish seasoned with ginger and fish sauce. The most common type of tinola is tinolang manok or chicken tinola. Chicken is sauted with ginger and fish sauce, water is added to make the broth. Sliced green papayas and siling labuyo (bird’s eye chili) leaves make up the rest of the ingredients. There are other modifications of course. In the South, instead of ginger, people use lemongrass. Green papayas are replaced with sayote/chayote while malunggay (Moringa) leaves are used instead of siling labuyo leaves.

You don’t need to add meat, though. Sometimes, I make vegetable tinola. The fish sauce is a must though, as the combination of ginger and fish sauce brings out a flavorful dish. Vegetable tinola can be any combination of vegetables and for this recipe I used upo (white pumpkin), sigarilyas (winged bean) malunggay leaves and siling labuyo leaves.

Vegetable tinola

100 grams upo
2 pcs winged bean
½ cup malunggay leaves
½ cup siling labuyo leaves
2-inch ginger
1 pcs small onion
Fish sauce to taste
Black pepper to taste

Slice ginger thinly. Chop onion crosswise. Peel upo and slice into 2-inch pieces. Remove core. Cut winged beans to 2-inch pieces and snap in the center. Saute ginger in 1 tsbp oil then add fish paste (1-2 tsp). Saute for a few seconds then add the onion. Saute some more till onion is limp. Add the upo, mix until half done. Add the winged bean, sauté for a minute then add half a cup of water. Bring to a boil. Adjust taste for saltiness by adding fish sauce. Add freshly crushed black pepper. When boiling, add the malunggay leaves and siling labuyo leaves. Let it simmer for a few minutes. Do not mix as this will make the broth bitter (it has been observed that when malunggay is mixed, the broth becomes bitter). Just press the leaves to wet with the broth. When the leaves are cooked, remove from fire and serve. This goes well with fried or grilled fish. I paired this dish with grilled milkfish.

Katie of Thyme for Cooking is hosting this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging. Watch out for her Easter round-up next week.

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Summer months coming up here! Beaches and more beaches… I’m heading off to the beach, watching waves go by with my vintage sunglasses.

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If I have enough time and enough money, I would buy myself a Class A motorhome and travel around the Philippines. I’ve done some land travel by public transpo and it is not really comfortable. Wouldn’t it be great to go from one place to the next, stop when you want, go to the market and cook it in your kitchen, find a place to picnic? If I were to do, here are some of the dishes I’d like to cook:

- Buy vegetables from the Trading Post in La Trinidad, Benguet and cook chopsuey
- Make kinilaw/tuna ceviche in General Santos, Zamboanga or Siargao Island
- Make seafood paella anywhere near a seafood place
- Cook Bicol Express in Bicol (where else?) and pinangat in Albay
- Cook different rice cakes from different areas in the Philippines such as puto maya in Iligan City, Tupig in Pangasinan, Moron in Leyte…
- Indulge in bangus belly in Dagupan, dried fish in Bantayan Island or pyannggang manuk in Zamboanga or Jolo?

My list would go on. How about you? If you were to go places, what would you like to cook?

Afritada is pork simmered in tomato sauce, bell peppers and potatoes. It is one of the common tomato-based dish in the Philippines with Spanish influence. This is also one of the earliest dishes I have learned to cook on my own. Over the years, I’ve made it my own and have made some more additions according to the influence I have learned through cooking.

I have mentioned before that I like to add fennel to my dishes so here I first marinated the meat with fennel. You will notice that typically sauteed dishes in Filipino cuisine have soy sauce.

Marinate one kilo pork belly (cut in serving pieces) with 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1 tbsp crushed fennel, and 1 tbsp crushed black pepper, crushed for at least an hour. In a pan, add 2 tbsp oil and saute garlic (5 cloves , minced), onion (1 medium size , chopped) then add the marinated meat. Brown meat then add potatoes (4-5 medium-sized potatoes, quartered) and saute for a minute. Add enough water to cover the meat. Bring to a boil then simmer till meat is tender. Adjust water as necessary. When meat is tender add 1 1/2 cups tomato sauce. Simmerfor 8-10 minutes then add bell pepper strips (one red and one green bell pepper). Take 3-5 pieces of potato and mash. Return back to the pot to thicken the sauce. Adjust salt taste. Simmer for two minutes. Add freshly crushed black pepper then remove from fire.

To eat, put steamed rice in a bowl. Top with the afritada, sit back in front of your tv lift cabinets, watch a good movie and enjoy it piping hot!

Imagine this, Filipinos eat rice three times a day. Yup, that’s how much rice is a staple in our diet. And take note, it is usually fried rice in the morning. Well, some regions it is just plain rice. But for Tagalogs, we love our fried rice in the morning. It’s usually that the night before, we cook rice with extra servings to fry the next day. Incidentally, fried rice is called sinangag.
One current issue today is the probability of having rice shortage. Now this would really send commodity brokers negotiating for the importation of rice. Believe it or not, while the Philippines has probably trained the best rice breeders from different countries, we still import rice. Ironic isn’t it? It’s not so much as access to the right varieties, investments in rice production but also political will. But then that’s another story.