Adobo: Most Gregarious Filipino Soul Food

Welcome my dear friends to Adobo Country.

There is never a day under the Philippine Sun when Adobo is not to be found on even one table across our islands. This national dish is truly reflective of our heritage and soul as a nation. It is a reflection of all cultural influences we have gained over the years, and yet is distinctly Filipino. Adobo is a most gregarious Filipino soul food, as it has pervaded and become popular even overseas. Wherever you find a pinoy, I'm sure they are as appealing as their adobo.

My sun browned soul always craves for this kind of soy browned recipe. There are a variety of ways to cook adobo. In fact, adobo is simply a manner in which food is prepared or marinated to be exact; meaning, there is an endless list of ingredients that you can make into an adobo. The basic pinoy adobo would still be either pork or chicken, or a combination of both. Wikipedia has already listed down a good number of variants:

"Other ingredients such as squid, beef, lamb, game fowl like quail and snipe, catfish, okra, eggplant, string beans, and water spinach (kangkong) are also made into adobo, with appropriate changes in the basic recipe. Squid adobo (adobong pusit), for instance, is quite different. While most adobo preparations have a brownish sauce, squid adobo has a deep, purplish-black sauce not unlike the Spanish dishcalamares en su tinta due to the inclusion of squid ink." From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobo

The Wikipedia article may have intentionally omitted the other more exotic variants like frogs' legs, rabbit, horse meat, Kalabaw (Water Buffalo), Bayawak (Monitor Lizzard), Suso at Kuhol (snails), Salagubang (scarab beetle family), Igat (eel), and others you can only dare think of. There are other vegetarian adobo ingredients too like tokwa (beancurd or tofu), or other edible green leafy vegetable growing in the backyard.

An Adobo can go without soy sauce but not without vinegar. I suggest you use real vinegar and not the artificial acidulants that are sold in supermarkets as vinegar. I recommend Sukang Paombong (nipa palm vinegar), Sukang Iloko (sugar cane vinegar), Sukang Sasa (coconut sap vinegar), or any other natural vinegar; or if you don't have any of these overseas, use strong apple cider vinegar. Vinegar prolongs the shelf-life of adobo, and the longer the meat ingredient is marinated the tastier it gets. Of course, this doesn't apply to vegetables which should be preferrably crisp or fresh. This method of food preparation and preservation is said to have been used by our ancestors long before the Spaniards came.

The Chinese should be thanked for their concoction of the magic brown liquid called soy sauce. This tasty condiment made from the fermentation of soybeans contributes the most umami or savory taste to adobo. Without soy sauce, the alternative would be salt if you want to avoid the brown color. I would only use patis (fish sauce) if I'm introducing variant ingredients like gata (coconut milk) and Siling Mahaba (Long Chillies) to make Adobo sa Gata. That reminds me, you can also add potatoes, hard cooked eggs, pineapple, saba bananas, and other extras.

Once the meat is well marinated in the sauce, it is time to cook it. Just don't forget to add in all the spices that make this dish a tasty treat. It's a must for this recipe to have garlic, bay leaves and freshly cracked peppercorns. I usually add in a little sugar to temper the acidity and to balance the taste. Boil it or fry it to your liking, and let it soak in its sauce or have it dry. Burn it to a crisp and you have the makings of a Sizzling Sisig. Add in ketchup, something truly asian, to give the meat a reddish-brown color and you have yourself a barbecue; put a little worcestershire sauce and it's westernized.

Need I say we eat it with rice or on pandesal bread?