Binakol

Chicken simmered in coconut water rather than stock, with the coconut flesh added at the end.

Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken, fish sauce.

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg chicken, in pieces
• 1.2 litres coconut water
• 300 g young coconut flesh, in strips
• 3 lemongrass stalks, bruised and knotted
• 60 g fresh ginger, in matchsticks
• 1 onion, sliced
• 6 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 200 g green papaya, in wedges
• 1 bunch chilli leaves
• 2 tablespoons oil

Method

1. COCONUT WATER, NOT COCONUT MILK, and that is the whole dish. The site has nine ginataang pages made with the milk; this uses the clear water from inside a young nut, which is thin and faintly sweet and gives a broth you can see through. Using milk here produces a different dish altogether, and a cloudy one.
2. Taste the coconut water first. It should be sweet and clean; if it is sharp or fizzy the nut has turned and the whole pot will be sour.
3. Fry the ginger, garlic and onion in the oil, 4 minutes.
4. Chicken in, 5 minutes, turned until the skin has tightened. No browning -- brown bits cloud the broth and this one is meant to stay pale.
5. Fish sauce, then the coconut water and the lemongrass in. Bring it up gently and hold it at a bare simmer, uncovered, 25 minutes.
6. DO NOT LET IT BOIL. Coconut water boiled hard turns distinctly sour, and there is no fixing it afterwards.
7. Papaya in, 10 minutes, until a knife slides in and the wedges hold.
8. Coconut flesh in for the last 4 minutes only. It is already soft and long cooking turns it to slime.
9. Heat off, chilli leaves in, lid on, 2 minutes.
10. Lemongrass out. Taste for fish sauce. It should be light, sweet and gingery.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes