Caught in yet another set of quarantines, this time called the NCR Plus Bubble, Filipinos found a diversion debating over tinola.
The staple Filipino chicken soup with ginger, green papayas and sili leaves is both comfort food and fuel for champions. No Manny Pacquiao fight coverage on TV is complete without a shot of the senator helping himself to a bowl of tinola.
Why is Tinola dividing Filipino foodies? It's because some find it bland as raised by food vlogger Erwan Heussaff, who shared his two-cents on the soup dish after seeing a tweet that described it as "chicken water."
"I really feel sorry for that guy. He's probably never tried a really good Tinola," Heussaff said in a video where he shared his own recipe of the dish.
"Why anyone would call this chicken water is beyond me," he said.
Tinola goes all the way back to the Spanish colonial era. In National hero Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere, he described tinola as a status symbol.
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So what makes a good tinola? For Heussaff, he said ginger is "the key" to making the dish really good.
"For me, this is really key. You really have to get that ginger brown and just smelling delicious even before you add your garlic or anything else," he said, adding his recipe skips the onions.
The choice of chicken also decides the taste of the tinola, according to Heussaff, which is why it's best to use organic, free-range, or native chicken for the "best flavor."
"In these times of uncertainty and frustration, over our current situation in the Philippines, focus your energy on what you can change and control. A bowl of soup never hurts either," he said.
Here's how Heussaff cooks tinola:
Tinola is similar to Singapore's Hainanese chicken rice, except that in the Singaporean delicacy, the rice and the soup are served separately. The rice is also flavored with the same broth that was used to cook the chicken.
Hainanese chicken rice is also served with a standard combination of sauces and dips -- hoisin, ginger, and chilies.
Tinola combines poultry with the soup and is paired with plain, piping hot rice. What the recipe will not always say, however, is that the diner eats it with their sawsawan of choice, be it patis, patis with calamansi, or patis with calamansi and chilies.
Like most Filipino soups, it's the sawsawan that rounds it out. Nothing bland there.
