Kinamatisang manok

Chicken in a thin broth of fresh tomatoes only, with no paste, no tin and no root vegetables.

Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken, fish sauce.

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg chicken, in pieces
• 1 kg ripe tomatoes, in wedges
• 60 g fresh ginger, in matchsticks
• 1 onion, sliced
• 6 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 800 ml water
• 200 g spinach or chilli leaves
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 0.5 teaspoon black pepper

Method

1. FRESH TOMATOES ONLY, AND A GREAT MANY. A whole kilo, in wedges, and nothing from a tin or a tube. That is the difference from the afritada on this site, which is built on tinned tomato and paste and has potato and carrot in it. This is thin, sharp and soupy, and it is meant to be.
2. Use properly ripe tomatoes and do not peel them. The skins break down over half an hour and they hold most of the colour.
3. Fry the ginger, garlic and onion in the oil, 4 minutes.
4. HALF THE TOMATOES IN FIRST and cooked down hard, 10 minutes, pressed with the spoon until they have gone to a pulp. That is the body of the broth.
5. Chicken in, turned over 4 minutes. Fish sauce over it.
6. Water in. Simmer covered 25 minutes.
7. THE OTHER HALF OF THE TOMATOES IN for the last 8 minutes, in wedges, so there are whole pieces in the bowl as well as the pulp they are sitting in. All in at the start and everything dissolves.
8. Heat off, greens in, lid on, 2 minutes.
9. Pepper. Taste for fish sauce. It wants to be faintly sharp -- if the tomatoes were sweet, a squeeze of calamansi puts it right.

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