Adobo — eating it, cooking it, talking about it, thinking about it — is also about memory, colonialism, cultural contact, consumption, family, cuisine, the senses, identity… and it’s good to eat too!

Remembrances, poetry, stories, recipes, photographs and other ruminations, whether fragmented or complete, long or short, rough or polished, are all welcome.

“Deadline” — or rather, posting time — will be Monday, December 8 — just drop me a line via email at wily [ a t ] thewilyfilipino.com when you’ve posted it on your blog, and I will combine the links (which you can then similarly append to your entries). (If you don’t have a blog, feel free to send me the writeup and I can post it on mine.) I encourage everyone to comment on each other’s work as well.

Hopefully this will be the beginning of a kind of collaborative Pinoy/Pinay blog project — one in a series where Filipina/o bloggers all write and post on the same topic (on the same day). (“Submissions,” by the way, are open to *everyone* who’s ever tasted / smelled adobo, whether it’s the Filipino, Mexican, or Peruvian variant…)

And please spread the word — the more participants, the better!

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There’s something in the air, and it’s adobo: adobo with beer, adobo with cinnamon, adobo with ginger, adobo with oregano, adobo with lots and lots of grease. And Joffin-Mari, where’s the adobo negro recipe you promised? (Can’t vouch for all the other ingredients, but the grease is crucial; the Mexican version, I think, involves ancho chiles, onions and oregano.) Even Eileen is volunteering to host an Adobo Sampler Party!

And — through sheer serendipity — here’s an excerpt from Professor Leny Strobel’s “The Power of Adobo” (taken from the Babaylan Speaks website):

Keep the lid off and let the flavors
Engulf the house to its rafters
Better yet open the doors
And windows, let your
Nosy neighbors envy you
of the delights
Of adobo

What a great image — the olfactory equivalent of cranking up the speakers…

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Funny that Eileen Tabios, that woman possessed by fallen angels, would post this recipe for chicken adobo, because I’ve been thinking of doing a chicken adobo post for some time. (Madeline once proudly told a roomful of Filipino grad students that I “can cook adobo now,” only to be met by a snicker from my friend Andrew, who replied, “It’s the one dish single Filipino men know how to cook!” Apparently Eileen doesn’t know it, so I don’t feel so bad.)

Speaking of white folks who cook adobo, Mark Bittman (yeah, that Mark Bittman) writes something to the effect that chicken adobo is the best chicken dish in the world — can’t find the exact quote, but it’s in his excellent How to Cook Everything. (For the record, Bittman’s recipe is way too salty.)

Anyhow, I’m posting Eileen’s friend’s recipe, because it uses some ingredients I don’t use (ginger! chicken stock!), and I’m interested in trying it:

Chicken Adobo By Bruce The Drapery Fella

Ingredients:

3 – 4 lb. frying chicken, washed and cut up
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup light or dark soy sauce
4 or 5 1/4″ slices of fresh ginger
5 cloves of garlic, crushed and skins removed
1/2 cup vinegar
chicken stock to cover (three or four 14 oz. cans of off-the-shelf stock should do)
1/2 teaspoon of corn starch, diluted in water (if thicker sauce is desired)

Method:
Put all ingredients (except corn starch) into a large pot, bring to the boil and then reduce heat to simmer until chicken is tender (approx. 1 – 1 1/2 hours).

Remove the chicken when it is cooked and “finish and adjust” the sauce to taste. At this point you’ll want to remove the ginger and garlic, add the corn starch mixture, sugar, vinegar or spices like chiles or a dash of Chinese Five Spice. Don’t forget to start the rice!

Looks pretty fancy to me.

Mine’s a lot simpler: 6-8 chicken thighs, 1/3 cup vinegar, about 4-6 tablespoons of soy sauce, two teaspoons of crushed garlic, 1/4 teaspoon of peppercorn, one bay leaf, and salt and pepper to taste. Brown the chicken first, then dump the whole mess in and simmer with the cover on for as long as you can bear to wait. And don’t forget to skim the grease off for the white folks! =)

(My other variation involves coconut milk: more or less the same ingredients above, except that the garlic is now upped to a whole head, minced. Then stir in half a can of coconut milk before serving.)

Anyone else?

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