These past few months, the weather is so cold. The start of the cold months in the Philippines is not anymore the “ber” months but its mid-January to mid-March. I like this kind of weather. You have the just right warm morning and the breezy wind at night.
Today is a cold rainy day. One way to beat the cold weather is a nice warm soup to pair with your steamed rice. A Filipino dish that fall in this category is tinola. It is usually made used of chicken but other meat will do. It has a ginger soup base mixed with green papaya or sayote, then topped with chili leaves or malunggay leaves. The flavor of the broth is warm and relaxing.
The best meat to enjoy this soup is pork ribs. I find it more flavorful when pork ribs is used rather than chicken. Oh, please don’t forget the fish sauce- calamansi or bagoong-calamansi dipping sauce. Add a chopped chili in your dipping sauce and you will surely ruin your diet.
The photo above has brown broth since I used brown rice wash instead of the white rice wash. You can use ordinary water is you like.
Ingredients
1 kilo Chopped Pork Ribs
4 cups Water
6 cups Water or Rice Wash
8 cloves Garlic, chopped
1 piece Onion, chopped
2 Tablespoons Grated Ginger
2 Tablespoons Bagoong
2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
Pepper
1 small piece Green Papaya, cut into 2 by 1 inch size
Bunch Chili Leaves or Malunggay Leaves
Salt to taste
Procedure
Thoroughly clean the pork ribs. Combine pork ribs and water. Boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Discard water and thoroughly wash the ribs.
Combine the pork ribs, rice wash, garlic, onion, ginger, bagoong, fish sauce and season with pepper. Boil and simmer until pork is tender.
Add the green papaya and simmer until the papaya is cooked. Add the leaves and let it simmer for a minute and season with salt to taste.
You can simply cut the ginger into strips but its much more flavorful when it’s grated.
Serve with steamed rice and fish sauce or bagoong dipping sauce.
