chicken tinola (tih ‧ no ‧ lah) - hot soup for the hot weather

thoughts about UK summers, reminiscing about street vendors, quail egg treats, and long bus rides in the Philippines, ft. chicken ginger soup

ever since I’ve moved to the UK I’ve always thought everyone here moans too much about the weather. not a day goes by where my co-worker doesn’t start our teams call without complaining about it - if it’s raining, “oh it’s so grey and depressing I can’t do anything”, if it’s sunny, “oh it’s so bloody warm outside I can’t even think”. considering we have a few internal calls, a few supplier and client calls sprinkled throughout one working day, it’s too many times in one day and honestly if you could just see my eye roll for every “hi there how are you? the weather is terrible here so hope it’s sunny there for you ha ha so jealous!”. and speaking of all these calls, isn’t it crazy how we can go on with 2 hour meetings and as you click that “end” button on teams you just sit there for a second staring at the screen, collectively sigh, and proceed to say “what a load of bullshit”

sometimes I think life can’t be too bad if the weather is all we can complain about here but hey - it’s not her fault that it’s the most appropriate way to start conversations with potential clients. and also something we can all relate with - it’s true. can’t really start a call with clients telling them what you really got up to on the monday bank holiday (did shrooms and watched a documentary about ‘salarymen’ in japan and thought about why we, as humans, with all our genius ideas and inventions, have subjected ourselves to being different tiers of ‘salarymen’, but I’m sure this has been explored too many times on substack so who cares). yeah can’t really talk about that, not in this ‘corporate job’ with my ‘corporate colleagues’, so let’s talk about the weather instead.

to be fair to my co-workers, the longer I live here the more I get it. the past winter has been the greyest never-ending-trickles-of-rain type of winter I’ve experienced here and as much as I truly love the cold and the gloom, I’ve really started to understand the need to feel the sun on my skin and to see more colours beyond the rgbs produced by my laptop screen.

one thing I also thought after i moved here about the UK is that when they say it’s a heatwave (and I swear, they say it almost every summer) it’s not really a heatwave. to be fair, it was, once! 2020 covid summer was the hottest summer to date here that people still talk about how glorious it was (nevermind the actual pandemic and millions of people who died but hey, as long as we had our greek salads and beers in the garden).

so, what was my point again?

the other day i was thinking, we’re about to hit peak summer and yes I am loving my tuna avocado salad and rice bowls but lately I’ve really been craving something cozy, warm, and comforting, but easy to make for dinner mid-week. so I made chicken tinola <3

it’s been months since I’ve made chicken tinola, and as soon as the aromas of the ginger, onions, and garlic simmered with chicken broth and green papaya fruit hit - I said to myself, why hasn’t this been part of my dinner rotations for a while?

what is tinola?

chicken tinola, alongside adobo and sinigang, is one of the most classic filipino dish out there. it’s light but also filling enough that you won’t feel hungry after 2 hours and wish you’d have a proper meal instead which most standalone soups make me feel (no offence to all the other soups, i love you really). but unlike it’s counterpart sinigang, it’s much more subtle with simpler ingredients that makes it perfect.

the importance of sabaw, meaning “soup” or “broth” in tagalog, in a filipino home

I was reading the chapter on “Soups: A Taste Of Home” from the “I Am A Filipino” cookbook, where they talked about sabaw, and how it’s been an integral part of every filipino household. as most filipino homes have one source of fire, all ingredients are thrown into one pot to nilaga, or “boil”. over the years souring agents such as bagoong, fermented fish paste, or coconut water, have then been added to add complexity to the dishes (more famous dishes such as sinigang or binakol)

filipino karinderias, translated literally as “cafeterias”, are quick take away restaurants where food is seen laid out in steam tables and simmering pots at the back. you can usually order a ‘combo’ meal where you get fresh rice, a few ulams, or main dishes, to go with your rice. and you would usually always get a cup of sabaw, to go with your combo meal to pampainit ng sikmura, or ‘heat your stomach’.

village to city and back bus rides with my grandma

I remember going to karinderias when travelling from our province to manila, the buzzing capital city of the philippines, and back. 10-13 hours on the road depending on how crazy your bus driver is, but memories that stay with me in these roadtrips would be the stopovers at karinderias or more common way to call them are turo-turos, literallly translating to “point-point”, as you just have to point out what ulam you would like to have with your rice and sabaw. you would only get 15-20 minutes at this stopovers to go to the toilet AND have your quick meal, but somehow,you’d be surprised how much you’re able to do in these 15 minutes: go to the toilet, go to the turo-turo, and have my £1 adobo with rice, sabaw, and a soft drink (bottled coca-cola of course), buy some snacks (I would always go for a macapuno pastillas for me but somehow I’ve not been able to find the perfect macapuno that tastes as sweet and delectable as how I remember it).

quail eggs on the road

another vivid memory i have on these long bus rides are the vendors that come and go in these buses - we’d stop by at a village, drop some people off, and a couple of street vendors with baskets of overflowing treats placed over their head would come in. another memory I always remember is my grandmother, who would buy two packets of boiled quail eggs that comes with a pouch of salt. my grandma would peel them all for me, i would dip each egg with a bit of salt on one side and eat one whole quail egg like candy.

I always wondered where the street vendors go, where do they live? they’d often stay on the bus with us and stay for another hour of the whole bus ride and when we go on another stop, they would then exit the bus. I wondered how they come back to where we’ve picked them up - do they join in in another bus going the other way? or do they just keep on going?

it’s been a while since I’ve been on a bus that’s definitely not safe to be driven on roads nowadays, nor a turo-turo for a while, but having this tinola does take me back to being young and just enjoying being sat, not really knowing where were headed, no devices in hand to play with - just my grandma peeling quail eggs for me and watching street vendors come and go.