This recipe was adapted from a March 2008 newspaper article (Philippine Daily Inquirer) featuring Chef Ed Quimson.  There were two recipes shared in this article.  One of them is Paella Tinola:  a fusion of the Spanish paella and the Filipino dish Tinola or tinolang manok (boiled chicken with ginger).   Tinola is a soothing and delicious ginger and chicken soup usually eaten with steamed rice.  The fact that Chef Ed combined the rice and tinola in one dish and baked it paella style is interesting enough for me try.   Here is his recipe as printed on the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken cut into 10 pieces
• 300 grams white onion, sliced
• 50 g garlic, crushed
• 150 g ginger, big slice
• 300 g green papaya, diced large
• 30 g carrots, diced large
• 2 bundles malunggay leaves (moringa leaves or sajina in India)
• 1/2 cup oil
• 3 pcs hot chili pepper
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 1/4 fish sauce
• 2 cups rice
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. In a paellera or paella pan, saute the ginger and onion in oil then add the chicken, carrots, rice and saute further.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and mix.  Cover the paellera with aluminum foil and bake in the oven at 400F for 30 minutes.

This sounds simple enough but I substituted a few ingredients:

• 500 grams boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite size pieces
• 1/2 medium size green papaya, peeled and slice into 2 inch cubes (about 200 grams)
• 1/2 cup hot chili pepper leaves (from frozen package, liquid squeezed out)
• 3 tbs olive oil
• 3 tbs fresh ginger sliced thinly
• 6 pcs Thai bird chilis, sliced
• 4 tbs fish sauce
• 1 1/2 cup wild rice
• 3 cups chicken stock

I don’t know if it is my oven or the wild rice that I used but my paella tinola took 1 1/2 hours at 400F to cook instead of the 30 minutes listed on the original recipe!   The resulting dish was good but not something to be excited about in my husband’s opinion (even with the 6 pcs of chilis!)  I probably won’t be making this again for just the two of us but it is a good possibility if I have Filipino friends visiting.  If you are trying this dish, let me know how it goes.  Maybe I can tweak mine a little bit more to make it exciting.

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