Chicken Tinola (Filipino Chicken Ginger Soup)

For days now I've been craving chicken tinola. So when we took a short trip to the grocery and I found some green papayas, I immediately grabbed them. Alas, the sales lady said that it was already too ripe to put in the tinola.

Nevertheless, I bought one whole chicken and had it chopped. When we got home, I asked our helper to go to the market and buy the rest of the ingredients for me. I haven't really cooked tinola ever before in my life so I turned to Google and found lots of recipes.

For this particular one, I chose to use a small green papaya (due to carb count) and added one small chayote. The two look almost identical when cooked and the chayote has such a mild flavor and it lends well to the dish. I remember chili leaves or sometimes malunggay leaves are added too but since I bought a couple bags of Bokchoy a few days ago, I decided to add those in.

So this really isn't the traditional chicken tinola of my childhood but it is still yummy and it gives me so much comfort and joy.