Chicken or Pork Adobo

Ingredients:
3 lb Chicken thighs or pork butt
1/2 cup Vinegar
1/4 cup Soy sauce
1 head Garlic, separated, peeled, crushed
1/4 tsp. Salt
1/4 tsp. whole Peppercorns -- crushed
2-3 pcs. whole Bay leaf
2 tbsp. cooking oil

Procedure:

Cut pork into 1 inch pieces. Cut up chicken pieces. In a bowl with a lid, mix together all ingredients, except the soy sauce. Cover & marinate overnight in the fridge. The following day, take pork/chicken pieces off the marinate. Pat dry pieces in paper towel. Place a large sauce pot over the stove. heat the pot, add 2 tbsp. oil. Fry chicken/pork pieces in batches. When all meat has been browned, place in a platter. Take the garlic pieces from the marinate, lightly brown. Add the pork pieces, 1 cup water and marinate into the pot. Bring to a boil; lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes. After the pork is partially cooked, add chicken pieces, simmer for 20 mins. Uncover, add soy sauce and simmer 15 more minutes or until liquid evaporates and chicken/pork are tender. Sauce should be nice & thick. Good to serve over piping hot steamed rice. Makes 6 servings.

This is an authentic Filipino recipe. Lots of Americans stationed in the Philippines during WW II claimed this recipe is to die for... it is!

Pointers:
this may sound shocking to some of u... the Philippines food are influenced of Spanish & Chinese cooking, due of these influences: all the dishes we cook that has acid in it... for example vinegar, tomatoes, 1 tsp. of sugar is added to the dish to balance the flavor.

my personal preferences: instead of adding water, i add 1 cup of Chardonay or Sherry cooking wine [the drinking kind, not the cooking wine in the grocery shelf.] cooking wine in grocery shelves are filled with salt! i never use that. wine added to recipes, the alcohol evaporates in the cooking process. adding wine to dish, the natural sugar of the grapes comes out in the dish. wine adds flavor to the dish.

wine i used in cooking, is the same wine i serve with the meal. in my family, we do serve wine before,during and after our meals.

i might add too, our food is always well balance. meat is considered a luxury during dinner time. we eat all day long, in small amounts.

cooks or housewives in this country is far luckier with their asian counterpart. in the orient woman folks seems to be in front of the stove from dawn to night --- busy cooking all the time, with breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner time, and more snack!

each meal prepared is always a combination of stir fried vegetables with little meat added. an entre of fish. deserts are normally fresh fruits.

breakfast in the Phils. is equivalent to Amer. family's dinner menu. we eat heavier during breakfast compared to the rest of the day's meal. it is a belief that we have to eat heavier cause during the span of the day --- there are lots of activities that needed to be accomplished, thereby the reason for heavy meal.

snack items, consist of food like porridge, rice cakes [there must be 100's of rice cake menu in the orient]. stir fried noodles believe it or not is considered a snack item rather than part of a meal. so are noodle soup. dimsum [Chinese Sunday brunch], are considered snack items too.

inspite of the eating schedule we have, orientals tend to be on the lean side than heavy for several reasons: we do not have all the modern conveniences available here. most of the activities are manual rather than automatic.

hope no one find this boring as it is sometimes good to know how other cultures eat.... ma vie