lauya a kamanokan & darangidangan a kapapayaan, native chicken soup with partially riped papaya

One of the most delicious, most savory, most gorgeous chicken soup or stew, for me, is of course, that of the "kamanokan" or free-range native chicken cooked/stewed for almost an hour in moderate fire to let its insane aroma and tasty fat to ooze out, turning the broth golden and thick. The beloved lauya a manok or tinola a manok. And of course, with the obligatory add-on, the distinct and essential green papayas and chili leaves or paria leaves or marunggay leaves.

But I adore more the almost ripe green papaya to complete my favorite lauya, for its obvious sweetness that enhances the soup/broth more and turns it more golden and delicious.

This is it:

A perfect labay!

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More "kamanokan" dishes:

• Native chicken adobo
• Lauya/tinola a kamanokan
• Pinapaitan a kamanokan, "native" chicken bitter soup

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pinapaitan a kamanokan, "native" chicken bitter soup

To continue on our kamanokan series on native free range chicken Ilokano dishes (lauya, dinardaraan, adobo), we'll conclude here with yet another kind of "exotic" dish that delights most Ilokanos: it's pinapaitan a manok! This is a rather unusual chicken soup and I bet some may frown at the idea or are not aware that, of course, your favorite tasty kamanokan can also have its own pinapaitan; not just the usual pinapaitan that you know (kalding, baka, nuang).

Pinapaitan a kamanokan.

This is part of the chicken giblet set aside for dinardaraan and pinapaitan: cut batikuleng (gizzard), dalem (liver), puso (heart), bara (lungs), some silet or bagis (intestines), and the "bittering agent" which is the apro (bile).

Here's what we're going to turn into an absolutely delicious pinapaitan. I added some strips of meat and skin. And that's the apro in the little red square bowl:

Sauté it in little cooking oil with lots of bawang, lasona and the laya, season with salt or patis and pepper; stir fry it until it oozes its yellowish own fat and the meat and skin and the rest of the giblet turn brown:

Pour in enough water for your soup, simmer for a few minutes and then add the apro. Don't put in all of the bile though, moderate bitterness by having a taste of the soup. Put in more bile if you prefer a really bitter pinapaitan. Put off fire and serve it hot and steaming. The resulting soup will be like this:

The kamanokan broth will turn more yellow with the apro, more golden, which is just so absolutely gorgeous and insanely delicious bitter soup so tasty and savory:

Optionally, if you're a really pinapaitan connoisseur, you can add more pait into your pinapaitan by adding paria leaves (a tinola with paria leaves or fruit is great as well).

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More about kamanokan (native free range chicken):

• panangisagana iti mailuto a kamanokan, native chicken preparation
• lauya/tinola a kamanokan 
• "native" chicken adobo
• nadigo a dinardaraan a kamanokan, "native" chicken blood stew/soup

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nadigo a dinardaraan a kamanokan, "native" chicken blood stew/soup

[Warning: Images of chicken giblet/entrails and blood may be disturbing and/or unsavory to some. Please view with discretion.]

We were done with the adobo and the lauya, and here with the specially set aside ingredients from the kamanokan we butchered, we're going to cook another authentic and unique Ilokano dish made out of a kamanokan: dinardaraan!

A chicken dinardaraan is not a common dish in that mostly, a chicken is usually intended to be cooked into a tinola or lauya, adobo, grilled/barbecued, or with curry or coconut milk. And for Ilokanos, the chicken blood is a delicious add-on in a lauya, coagulated with glutinous rice, it enhances the flavor of the broth. And the more usual way to prepare a chicken dinardaraan (also called sapsapuriket) is to cook it dry, not soupy, with lots of chili and garlic and black peppers, hot and spicy, intended as a special pulotan.

But here, I am about to cook a nadigo (soupy) a dinadaraan, simply because I just want to enjoy its savory soup, and so that I have a plenty of dinardaraan to enjoy (a dry dinardaraan with  the giblet of only one chicken is just a handful but having it as a soup is filling enough).

Nadigo a dinardaraan a kamanokan.

This is chicken giblet I prepared for the dinardaraan: batikuleng (gizzard), dalem (liver), puso (heart), bara (lungs), some silet or bagis (intestines). I also included the chicken's ukel-ukel (testicles, this is a kawitan, a rooster) to add more "nanam" to the dish:

And of course, the dara (blood). I added a little vinegar into it to prevent coagulation and for an added bit of sourness later into the dinardaraan:

Cut the giblet into small pieces; set aside the apro and the ukel-ukel. Prepare the laya, lasona and bawang:

And here, it's ready...

Sauté the bawang, lasona and the laya until brown/caramelized:

Add the cut chicken giblet and stir fry it quickly in high heat. Add salt or patis (or bugguong if you prefer) to taste (and optionally, umami or those ginisa flavoring mixes). Add cracked black peppers, too, of course:

Don't overcook the chicken, taste it to see if it's partially done. Pour in the blood at this juncture:

Stir fry it and mix the blood evenly:

Add some water and simmer. Add some little vinegar if you prefer a sour soup. In this particular dinardaraan, it's somewhat sour because of the vinegar I added into the blood to prevent coagulation:

And it's done. And oh, by the way, I added sili nga aruy-oy (capsicum annuum, siling haba, finger chili) to make this dinardaraan a traditional one with sili:

The soup is so delicious, specially so when I mashed the boiled chicken testicles into the broth it resembled the tasty and sensuous "soup no. 5" (bull's penis and testicle soup):

Spice it more with chili powder or cayenne pepper or with chili fermented in vinegar for that amazing kick!

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More about kamanokan:

• panangisagana iti mailuto a kamanokan, native chicken preparation
• lauya/tinola a kamanokan 
• "native" chicken adobo
• pinapaitan a kamanokan, "native" chicken bitter soup

Read More

lauya/tinola a kamanokan

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:

• Native chicken adobo
• Panangisagana iti mailuto a kamanokan, native chicken preparation

Read More

panangisagana iti mailuto a kamanokan, native chicken preparation

[Warning: Graphic photos of slaughtered fowl, maybe disturbing to some, please view with discretion. Thank you.]

Cut native chicken ready for cooking.

Preparing chicken for cooking into your favorite chicken dishes entails a lot of labor, so to speak, you’ll be obliged to know and apply some bits of slaughtering, quartering, cutting, cleaning techniques. Especially if you butcher kamanokan or that so-called “native” free range chicken. Of course, there’s an added thrill if you yourself will the one to prepare the chicken, unlike buying already cut “white” and “untasty” chicken from your meatshop or suki meat vendor for choice cuts like drumstick, thight, breast, back, neck, wings, head, feet, isaw. Not so with kamanokan because you buy it “live” as nobody sells dressed or pre-cut kamanokan. Even if you do not have native chickens in your backyard, there are available ones for sale in most public markets, but it’s sure expensive, from PhP200 a kilo and up.

A kamanokan for sale in a roadside talipapa.

I’m used to butchering kamanokan since I was a child in the barrio. Farm, okey, peasant, boys are expert butchers of native fowl, be it chicken, duck, goose, turkey and those wild birds caught in the ricefields and forested areas.

For one, I can prepare a native chicken all by myself, grasp and hold it so it can’t move (a chicken is so strong, moreso when it’s dying, it trembles so hard in its spasmic last it’s like having a violent seizure), then kill it by slashing its neck for that precious dara (blood, for sapsapuriket or dinardaraan later or as a delicious coagulated blood in the savory tinola) to gush out and then trickle down your malukong (bowl) with a ready little suka (vinegar) and/or diket a bagas (sticky rice grains).

Then, the dressing, (or is it really undressing?) the plucking out of its feathers after immersing the bird in hot water (to loosen the feather in the skin), a somewhat painstaking labor but worth the effort later for that promise of a tasty digo (soup) that only a kamanokan can assure.

And then, you’ve got to get rid of the tiny hair-like feathers which cannot be pulled out so easily from the skin, by making sarabasab (put over fire) the dressed bird into an open fire or flame, to burn the muldot (hair):

The sarabasab.

Chicken with its “hairs” burnt.

Then, the washing of the dressed chicken. Wash it thoroughly and vigorously in nagarasawan (ricewash water). Some even scrub and rub it with salt. Get rid of all dirt and burnt feather ends. Remove also the scales of its feet. Then wash it again and rinse it many times in tap or running water.

After which, the opening up and cutting up. Remove the kinarakaran (crop) and its esophagus as well as the wind pipe in the neck area. The gizzard connects to the batikuleng (gizzard), do not cut off the “connecting tube” at this juncture, remove them at once later, kinarakaran and batikuleng and the other organs (liver, heart, lungs, etc.) and the intestines:

Then open it up. There’s a little trick or technique on how to open up the bird like this:

Remove the butt with the intestine connecting into it intact. Be careful in doing this, you might cut it wrong and it will make a mess with chicken shit, errrr:

Here’s the bunch of the removed organs and intestines (notice that there also the “balls”, the testicles; yes these are male kamanokans, roosters), ready for cleaning:

The dara:

The cutting up and cleaning of the organs and intestines:

Choice cuts, especially for adobo—thighs, drumsticks, breasts, wings:

The dalem (liver), batikuleng, puso. And the apro (bile) is there, upper right, for the pinapaitan soup later:

The “buto-buto” (tultulang) or bony parts—feet, neck, head, ribs, back—ready in a pot, perfect for tinola or lauya:

All ready:

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Next: tinola/lauya a kamanokan!

Watch out: dinardaraan a kamanokan and pinapaitan a kamanokan.

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