one filipino dish a week

Growing up in Cebu you see rotisserie chicken all over the city. And I looove lechon manok or chicken inasal or Filipino style rotisserie chicken or whatever you want to call it! So I decided to make one. Unfortunately, I don’t have that awesome rotating cooking apparatus so I had to improvise and make do with what I have.

This is how I made it:

2 cornish hens
2 stalks lemongrass
1 medium size spanish onion
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste

I used cornish hens because they’re smaller and could easily be eaten by just one person (aka Me!). I rubbed the chicken inside and out with salt and pepper. I then stuffed it with the lemongrass, minced garlic and julienned onion. I marinated it in the soy sauce overnight. The marinating is the key part to this whole operation. So make this ahead of time like on a Friday night after happy hour and before going back out again (ok I know that’s not very realistic but hey I can dream).

After the chicken has been bathing in the soy sauce marinade for a long time it’s time to reap your rewards. I wanted to broil the chicken to give it the cooking that I think would be closest to the rotisserie. The one thing about the broiler is that it was too close to the fire and it was burning the skin too much before it was time. So I had to move it farther from the flame. Continue basting the chicken with the marinade as you are cooking. Cook the chicken until it’s 165deg F using an instant read meat thermometer.

We ate the chicken with a nice bottle of riesling. It complemented the chicken pretty well. This was one of those sweet and fruity, low alcohol (9.5%) rieslings. This also would’ve been great with some atsara (which I had in the fridge but didn’t take out… doh!).

I’m not that good at carving I tore up all the skin as I was trying to plate this chicken. So it looks naked right there. But still real gooood nonetheless! The chicken was juicy and you can smell and taste the lemongrass.

Eat Filipino Food!

This post was inspired by this video. Quite a brave guy if you ask me.

So I’ve been asked why I haven’t written about adobo yet. Here it is. Adobo is considered by many THE quintessential Filipino dish. The hints of sour may put off the uninitiated but the sourness is comforting to displaced pinoy yearning for home. There are different stories of where the name of the dish is really from, is it truly Filipino, is it borrowed from the Mexicans, etc. As far as I’m concerned the Filipinos have made this dish our own and have put our stamp on it that it can’t be de-coupled anymore.

I wanted to make chicken adobo but I wanted to make it a little bit “healthier” with chicken breast. I was kind of skeptical if this would really work. The problem with chicken breast is that there’s not much flavor to it and it dries out quickly. I browned about a 1.5lbs of cubed chicken breast on the pan before I put in the soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaves and garlic mix. I let that simmer a little bit until the chicken cooked through. I took the chicken out and let the mixture reduce. I put the chicken on a plate and poured the sauce over it. I garnished it with some scallions.

It wasn’t bad. But definitely not the best chicken adobo I’ve had. I think if the chicken breast were marinated in the soy sauce-vinegar mixture for about 15-20 minutes before cooking would’ve made it better. Let’s eat!