Coleen's Recipes: Sinampalukang Manok

I think I've mentioned it a couple times before that I really, really love soups, especially sinigang.  I learned this recipe more than a decade ago from my aunt and I've considered it as one of my specialties ever since.  This version has been modified according to my taste so beware. :)

Ingredients:

• vegetable oil
• half a garlic bulb (around 4 to 5 cloves), chopped
• half an onion, chopped (preferably red but I used white onions on this one since we ran out of red ones)
• small ginger, sliced
• 5 native tomatoes, sliced
• 1 pack of chicken
• pepper
• water
• 2 chicken cubes
• 1 1/2 packs of Knorr Tamarind Soup Base Mix
• fish sauce
• siling haba (long green chilies)
• mustard leaves (this dish usually calls for native pechay but we only had mustard leaves so I improvised)

Procedure:

• Heat some oil in a wok.  Once the oil is hot, add the ginger and garlic and sauté.

• Add the sliced onions and sauté until transparent then add the sliced tomatoes and keep sautéing until a bit mushy.  

• Add the chicken and let it fry in the garlic-onion-ginger-tomato mix and in its own oil (the chicken will give out its own oil).  Sprinkle pepper on the chicken.

• Once the chicken is cooked, add some fish sauce.  I used around 4 to 5 tablespoons on this one.  You may add more or reduce depending on your taste.  Let the chicken simmer some more, mixing it from time to time.

• I love tomatoes so I decided to add some more.  You can choose not to and just go straight to adding a bowl of water and letting it boil.  But if you add some tomatoes, let it simmer with the chicken before adding the water.  Add the two chicken cubes and boil away again!

• Add the 1 1/2 packs of Knorr Tamarind Soup Base Mix and the long green chilies after it boils.  Add another bowl of water and let it boil. 

• Add the mustard leaves after it boils and let it boil for another 5 to 10 minutes.

I like my sinigang and sinampalukan really sour so I used 1 1/2 packs of the tamarind mix with 2 1/2 bowls of water.  If you want to lessen the sourness, just add more water or lessen the tamarind mix.  Up to you. :)  

As I've mentioned earlier, this recipe originally calls for native pechay but since we only had mustard leaves, it had to do.  Thankfully, it worked.  It went well with the sinampalukan.  This was the first time I used a vegetable other than pechay and it was great.  I wouldn't recommend any other leafy vegetable though.  I don't think spinach or kang kong or cabbage will work on this dish.  The texture of the mustard leaves is similar to that of pechay which is why it worked (at least that's what I think.)