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| Lauya/tinola a kamanokan a nalaokan iti papaya ken bulong sili. |
Now that the
kamanokan (native free range chicken) is
prepared (butchered, dressed, cut and cleaned), here's one most popular dish we can turn a
kamanokan into a very savory and sumptuous soup:
tinola or
lauya with a variety of obligatory veggies like green papayas,
sayote, tabungaw, kabatiti, etc. and various leaves of which
sili, paria and
marunggay are the most preferred.
These are the best cuts for
lauya/tinola, the bony parts: head, feet, rib, back, wings (the testicles are here to make the soup even tastier):
First thing, sauté the chicken cuts in little cooking oil and lots of garlic, onions and ginger. Stir fry the meat in high heat until it turns brown and its natural oil oozes out and its distinct kamanokan aroma steaming and wafting garlicky and most of all gingerly. You can season and spice it at this juncture, add some salt or teaspoons of patis, a pinch of cracked black pepper. For a uniquely Ilokano zest and aroma, stir fry it with bugguong juice.
Done stir frying. The meat is melting with chicken and spicy goodness, its fragrance overwhelming the whole kitchen and its heavenly scent whiffing outside tantalizing neighbors' jealous noses. Now, pour in a couple of cup or so of water and season more to taste:
Let it simmer in moderate heat
Boil it for about an hour until the meat is tender enough and the soup a kind of thick. One way to check if the chicken is done is to see its feet, the
karaykay, if it's tender and soft and chewy. When cooking
kamanokan, I boil it for over a couple of hours or more for it to render its intense aroma and flavor, adding more crushed ginger for a really spicy soup. For a thicker soup, you can opt to mash the liver into the broth.
And then, when the meat is tender enough, put in the veggies. In this particular
lauya a manok, I added papaya,
sili leaves and some
sili fruit (
aruy-oy a sili, siling-haba in Tagalog):
The soup will eventually turn golden or yellowish because of the chicken fat. As this one is boiled in ours, the soup is so insanely savory, tasty and spicy because of the ginger (I used native ginger here, and of course native garlic and onions (the Ilocos varieties)--all "native"!):
And here's it, the blessed
tinola, the holy
lauya a kamanokan in all it's glorious grace and goodness, the golden
digo promising a divine providence, nay, an intervention, of gastronomic proportion:
My favorite
tinola parts are here, all bony but the most tasty and delicious of all
manok master pieces:
ulo (sucking out the
mata and the
utek is not sacrilegious at all but religious),
tengnged, payak, paragpag, kimmol, saka/karaykay...
The papaya is sweet, I prefer sligthly ripened papaya for most of my
tinolas as I love the sweet pulpiness of the papaya. The
sili leaves and fruit is just as aromatically good. Sometimes, I add but
paria leaves just for the scandalously exquisite bitter soup it imparts to tease and please an Ilokano palate in me.
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More on native chicken:
