ADOBO

Chicken vendor; print from the 19th c.

While there can be endless debate to the issue, I hereby declare ADOBO the national dish of the Philippines. It is one of the most popular, portable (needs no refrigeration if prepared properly), and I dare say the most shared dish with non-Filipinos. And the most traveled: adobo is eaten from the kitchens of Manila, to Hong Kong, to Dubai, to Milan, to Park Avenue, to the staff galleys of every luxury cruise ship sailing the seven seas. It is the one dish I can declare as truly Filipino. Ask any NYC Filipino nanny, if they have ever fed their American charges adobo, and they will likely tell you “yes.” The irony about this “national” dish is that if there are 50 million Filipino cooks, then there are 50 million versions of adobo.

We share with you the following recipes from a popular Filipino blogger who calls himself Marketman or MM. An interesting thing about MM, other than that he is a good cook, and writer, and a self-confessed eater, is that he went to school in Boston and lived away from the Philippines for quite some time. This makes his recipes user friendly to the Filipino cook abroad and for the non-Filipino cook as well. Italics are mine. My guess is that Mrs. MM has brown hair. Light haired people, please take no offense.

“Blonde” Chicken Adobo a la Marketman
Cut a whole chicken into serving size pieces, say 8-10 large pieces. In college, I sometimes used only chicken wings because they were the cheapest cut, yet they were the most flavorful. Place in a pot and add ½ cup of apple cider vinegar, a little water, whole peppercorns, several cloves of slightly mashed garlic, 2-3 bay leaves and some salt. Simmer until tender. Add some Kikkoman soy sauce and cook for a few more minutes to blend the flavors. Make sure the liquid boils down a bit so that the sauce is slightly thickened. Apologize to irate neighbors if you live in an apartment as the smell is something else to the uninitiated nose. Serve this with rice if you are in a hurry. This is the “blonde” version as this is rather pale (no Marca Pina® soy sauce that is black as sin in Boston) and relatively less tasty than some of the dark stewed versions of the dish you may find in the Philippines.

“Brunette” Chicken Adobo a la Marketman
If you have time and can stand the mess, take the blonde version one step further. Heat up a frying pan and pour some of the fat from the sauce into it and add a bit more vegetable oil or lard if you have it. Take the chicken pieces and fry them briefly (just a minute or two on each side to give it a nice caramelized brown crust). Put these on a serving platter. Boil down the sauce to further reduce and serve as a sort of gravy on the side. This version looks more appetizing and photographs better but it is still adobo.

Pork Adobo a la Marketman
I do not like to mix chicken and pork adobo because the meats take differing amounts of time to cook. Unless you pace the cooking, the chicken is overcooked and the pork just cooked. So I like to cook the pork separately. Take fatty pork (pork belly or pork shoulder) and cut into medium sized cubes. Put in a pot with lots of apple cider vinegar, peppercorns, garlic, bay leaves and some water. Boil or simmer until the pork is tender. Do not add soy sauce to this mixture. When the pork is cooked remove it from the sauce and pour Kikkoman soy sauce over the meat and let it marinate for about 10 minutes, making sure all the pieces get coated in soy sauce. Then fry the pieces in a frying pan until just caramelized. Boil down the remaining sauce together with the remaining soy sauce from the marinade and serve this on the side.

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Amy Besa, owner of Cendrillon, a gem of a Filipino restaurant in SoHo, NYC, has her own take on adobo, published in the Oct 2005 issue of Saveur magazine. Read HERE.

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Finally, my best friend since Kindergarten, Popsie Gamboa, whose family owns Milky Way, a famous decades-old restaurant that generations of Manilenos have frequented, sent me her recipe for adobo.