This Sunday is a productive day for me as I was able to fix my things, do some laundry and cook for our lunch. I seldom cook especially that I am still a student and got busy on various things. But since this is Sunday and we got a short sem break, it is nice to learn new things just like cooking a simple Filipino dish.
We had tinolang manok for lunch today or a chicken soup dish in English. The green papaya is commonly used in cooking this dish but you can also use sayote or pear squash, and that was the ingredient I used today. Another common ingredient for this dish is the chili leaves but since we forgot to buy some in the market earlier, we decided to still cook it without it, it still tasted good. Two main ingredients are chicken meat and pear squash for this simple dish for today
The chicken meat was already frozen. It was cut into pieces already so, I placed it in the casserole and add some water for the soup of this dish. Then let it boiled. The amount of water you will going to add depends on how much meat you will going to cook and if you prefer lots of soup or not.
The pear squash was cut into medium sized pieces. I only used one piece of pear squash but you can add more if you prefer more veggies in your dish.
To add flavor on it, I also added one piece of chicken broth cube.
Wait until the meat become a bit tender before adding the slices of pear squash so that the vegetable will not be overcooked.
Add salt according to your taste or on your desired taste. Wait several minutes until the meat was fully cooked then it was all done! Serve hot and enjoy your tinola or chicken soup with pear squash.
I almost forgot to include my username and date as I got excited to eat already. :D
This Filipino dish is best eaten or served with a newly cooked rice.
Note: It is also easy to cook rice. Place/put some rice on a rice cooker then wash it twice. After removing the water after the second wash, Add some water again and in a rice cooker, there are markings to guide its users on until what level the water should be.
If you do not have a rice cooker, you can still cook rice. You can use any casserole and wash the rice twice also, then add water. Then in measuring the water level, you can use your finger as a guide. Dip your hand on the casserole with rice and water with your hand open until the tip of your middle finger touches the top portion of the rice. Then the water level should be until the second line of your middle finger.
Rice is a staple food for Filipinos as well as for most of the Asians. The white rice is the most common rice in the households. There are other types of rice such as the brown rice, glutinous rice and black rice.
All images are mine on this post. Thanks for reading and happy cooking!