Tinumis

When I was a child, Sundays being the market day in our town in Norzagaray, our extended family would infrequently be feasting on Tinumis, the Bulaqueño's heirloom blood stew. This is not the common Dinuguan, which I first met in Manila where I spent my high school days. Tinumis' soup base is not thick and there would be less liquid; and the meat is meat, not innards/offal. We use chopped young tamarind leaves, not vinegar. I remember climbing tamarind trees to gather a cup or two of young leaves. Of course there would always be Jalapeno pepper.

In our household, we would also extend the dish with sitao (string beans) or other neutral tasting vegetable (sayote or upo) so that more mouths could be fed. It appears now that we might be the only family which did so, as I have yet to learn of others who did the same with their Tinumis.

The pictures below are courtesy of Shalimar, a Filipina hopping all over Europe (from her wanderlust blog). The recipe is a frenchified tinumis. She used boudin noir (blood sausage) and vinegar, so it is technically dinuguan, but the look and texture is like our Tinumis.