My first choice. Adobo

My mom's Adobo

For my first choice of food for my food blog would be Adobo. Adobo is originally a method of cooking in Spain wherein in a raw food is marinated for preservation. When the Spanish invaded us in the late 16th century, they encountered a cooking process that involved stewing with vinegar. The Spanish referred to this method as adobo due to its superficial similarity to the Spanish adobo. Nevertheless, the Filipino adobo is an entirely separate method of preparing food and is distinct from the Spanish marinade. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobo ).  Because of the popularity, Adobo became one of our national dish. 

About a year ago, I was watching Bobby Chinn's show in TLC "World Cafe Asia", if you are a fan of that show, you know that every time he visits a country he tries to cook a national dish or the most famous dish in that place. In our case when he came here, he cooked Chicken Adobo in one of our famous culinary school. I actually forgot which school it was, but I remember seeing Judy Anne Santos and Janice de Belen in the backround. So they thought him how to cook  Chicken Adobo using lemon grass, spices and vinegar only. I find it kind of interesting because I have never seen Adobo with lemon grass and no soy sauce. He said that it was good, but I'm not really sure about that  .

I have an office mate before whom lives in Batangas City, he asked me how do I cook Adobo. I said that I cooked the pork with water, soy sauce, vinegar, laurel leaves, ground pepper and lots of garlic. He wondered why it was different from them. I asked him, "what is your version of adobo?". He told me he was not sure how it was cooked but it is white. So I said, "uhm, I wonder how it is cooked?". Then a few months after that, a restaurant near our house opened serving batangas home made food. I was excited because I was tired eating from Andok's , Jollibee , Chowking and very pathetic branch of Goldilocks near our house, so I immediately visited the store to see the menu. I remembered my office mate when I saw to their menu "Batangas Adobo" and it was white.  But instead of ordering that, I ended up ordering the Batangas Bulalo. So while I was waiting for my order, I heared a customer asking what is the difference with the Batangas Adobo. The owner said it's cooked with ginger instead of putting soy sauce. I said to myself, "uhm. That will be a bit difficult to cook." So with my second visit to the store, I finally ordered the Batangas Adobo. It's not what I expected to taste but it's definitely close to the Adobo I've known but without the soy sauce.I think that each region in our country have different kind of version of Adobo. Every now and then, Filipino's became more creative in changing cooking style, adding up new things to old tradition. Like in some, they add pineapple bits , potatoes , boiled eggs (chicken or quail) or in others cases replace ingredients with other stuff. But whatever version it may be if it's Adobo, it will definitely make you feel at home.

One of my favorite Adobo,  is

My mom's Adobong Pusit

Adobong Pusit. For the past month, my mom and I have been going to Farmer's Market in Cubao where fresh seafoods, meat and vegetables are always available. She's been cooking it for 3 weeks straight and I never get tired of eating it. Well it's not the fact that one of my favorite seafood is squid, it's just that Adobong Pusit is one of the best way to enjoy it. Especially when the squid is fat and pregnant. Hmmm... I can hear angels singing.  . For vegans to enjoy Adobo, they have Adobong Kangkong. It's the same process of 

cooking a regular Adobo, but you have to replace meat with Kangkong. Among the various variety of Adobo. Adobong Kangkong is one of the healthiest  and the friendliest  on budget. Kangkong is one of the most known vegetable available in the market. With a pricing of 10PHP per bundle, almost anyone can enjoy Adobo.