VINEGAR-BRAISED Chicken adobo over rice

Adobo and I have a love/hate relationship. I love the idea of adobo— that sour-salty-garlicky combination, the way the flavors adapt to almost any kind of meat or vegetable, the special place it holds in the hearts of Filipinos everywhere. I’ve disliked almost every version of adobo I’ve tried, however, including the version from my own home and the ones I’ve tried to cook myself. But before everyone crucifies me on the very judgmental platform of social media, let me explain.

I was a bit of a picky eater when I was a toddler, and there were many things I wouldn’t eat, such as seafood, chicken, bananas (still don’t like them to this day!), liver, egg yolks. For some reason, I didn’t like adobo. I didn’t like the sourness, or sometimes I didn’t like the saltiness. I didn’t like the slimy texture of the chicken skin, chicken meat stuck to grayish chicken bones that looked like they had blood on them made me want to close my eyes, and I didn’t like the sticky, gelatinous texture of pork skin and pork fat (yes, that’s the kind of picky eater I was). I don’t know how it happened, but it seems that my mom just gradually stopped serving adobo. Maybe it was so she wouldn’t have to prepare an additional dish for me on adobo days?

The years passed by, and I happily lived my life without adobo. Oh, I would politely eat any adobo served to me at a restaurant or meal, but there was no love.
By the time I became an adult the perfect adobo lived in my mind. The meat was tender with crisp edges. It was deep, dark brown, glistening with rendered fat, garlicky, salty with just a slight tang of vinegar in the background. I couldn’t remember if I had ever eaten adobo like that in my childhood, I had certainly never come across it in adulthood, but it was the adobo I wanted to eat. And it grew to almost mythic proportions in my mind.

I discovered that I didn’t know how to cook adobo. People I asked were no help because they would just tell me to marinate the meat with vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, laurel leaf, and peppercorns, then simmer until it was cooked. Measure vinegar and soy sauce to taste, they would tell me. The first adobo I made was inedible. I didn’t know I had to use water, so I added enough soy sauce and vinegar to cover the meat! In those days before internet, there were no recipes I could check online, and the only Filipino cookbook we had at home was Nora Daza’s (except, I wasn’t really happy with her adobo recipe). So I pushed that perfect adobo back into a hidden corner of my mind.

THE MANY FACES OF ADOBO Pork adobo with shallots

Earlier this year, well-known artist, kusinero, and writer, Claude Tayag came out with The Ultimate Filipino Adobo: Stories through the Ages with equally well-known food writers Micky Fenix and Ige Ramos. The book was published by the Foreign Service Institute in its foray into gastronomy to promote Philippine cuisine and food products. In his introduction, Claude explained that over the course of one year, he had written 18 articles on Filipino adobo, mainly as a personal protest against the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) 2021 effort to “standardize” an adobo recipe. The DTI’s announcement was met with violent reactions from Filipinos who declared that adobo could not be standardized because it was a dish that was personal to each person who made it.

I had a slightly different, rather unpopular view. I would have welcomed a basic, standard recipe. I understood that everyone had their own version of adobo, and that personal taste preferences shouldn’t be standardized but in those dark days when I was struggling to cook adobo, I would have liked to be able to refer to directions that could tell me the ratio of vinegar to soy sauce or salt for a kilo of meat. Just as a baseline, so that I would know what adobo should taste like, so that I could then adjust it to suit my taste. It would have saved me from wasting several bottles of vinegar and soy sauce. It’s also something non-Filipinos who have never tasted adobo before, but are interested enough to try to cook it, might appreciate.

The Ultimate Filipino Adobo begins with Claude Tayag’s deep dive into Filipino adobo. He discusses cooking methods and ingredients, dwelling particularly on vinegar, the baseline liquid for adobo. Sourness, he notes, is the most dominant taste in Philippine cuisine.

Claude continues with a chapter on the “classics” and how variations are found throughout the country. He gives a general guideline that for every kilogram of meat, 1/2 a cup of vinegar is used, with 1/4 cup of soy sauce, or one tablespoon of salt, or 1/4 cup of patis (again, I could have used this during the dark days of my adobo struggle!). The chapter goes on to list and explain adobo sa puti, adobo sa toyo, adobo sa atsuete from Batangas City and Iloilo City, adobong manok sa dilaw from Batangas, adobo sa gata from Bicol, adobo sa palayok, crispy adobo flakes. And then there’s also a chapter on pre-Hispanic adobos.

ADOBO CHRONICLES Chef Claude Tayag’s book lists the cultural significance of adobo and the many ways people make it

But what about my own personal adobo story, you ask? Did I find my perfect adobo? Sometime in 2016, I had lunch at Claude’s Downtown 1956 Café, and found the closest thing to the adobo I was looking for in his menu’s Pork Adobo Confit. It was fork tender, with crisp edges and skin, and an intensely flavored sauce more salty than sour. It became my personal baseline.

I had told Claude of my adobo frustrations, and one day he offered to show me how to make it. At a planned dinner with friends at my house, he and his wife, Mary Ann, showed up with all the ingredients, most important of which were several kilograms of beautifully layered pork belly cut into large chunks, and his own vinegar that he would ferment at home. I won’t go into the recipe, because a version of it is found in his book in the chapter on Claude’s own adobo interpretations, but I will say that it involved a lot of pork lard, oil, slow gentle cooking, and sputtering-hot oil flying-risk your blemish free arms frying. The result is worth all the effort.

Much of The Ultimate Filipino Adobo book is devoted to the personal adobo stories and recipes of Filipinos and restaurants in the Philippines and around the world. It’s a love letter to Filipino adobo, to families, and to home and country, and that warm, fuzzy, comforting feeling that adobo gives to Filipinos everywhere in the world. The recipes and ingredients used are a testament to adobo’s versatility, and to the Filipino ability to make the best of their situation. Going through the book has shown me so many versions of adobo I’d like to try to make. And as Ambassador Jose Maria A. Cariño explained in his foreword, the book is a tool for gastrodiplomacy. I think it’s a great way to introduce Filipinos and our food to the world.

As for me, I took the recipe Claude taught me, settled on my ratio of two parts soy sauce to one part vinegar, and finally managed to put together my own recipe for my perfect adobo. The meat has crispy edges and chewy bits, it’s deep and dark, garlicky, glistens with a sheen of oil, and has just enough of a sour edge of vinegar to mark it as adobo. I cook it at home regularly now, and I can finally say I’m in love with Filipino adobo.

The Ultimate Filipino Adobo: Stories through the Ages is available in the Philippines via Lazada and Shopee and in the US at Seafood City.