What's Cooking With Dive? Adobo

Hokay … Time to put on a pinny and head for the kitchen.

This will be the first of yet another series of posts: "What's Cooking With Dive?"

Both Phil and I have been fanatical cooks and snobby foodies for decades, so I don't know why I've not thought of doing this before.
The catalyst that's kick-started this series is - many thanks to Joy and Jong - that I have been introduced to a range of dishes I'd not come across before (and I thought I knew everything … go figure): Pinoy Cuisine.
So we'll start the series with me discovering and trying out various dishes from The Philippines.
Feel free to join in.

Dish number one is wonderfully simple, quick to prepare, requires no "specialist" ingredients, will keep for up to a week and is great eaten hot, warm, tepid or cold (how many dishes do you know that come with the advice "serve tepid"?) …

Today we'll be cooking ADOBO; more specifically adobong pork.
This dish can be cooked using any meat or fowl, fish or veggie (Joy is veggie/pescy so she uses quorn or salmon but for a veggie version I'd probably use chunked sweet potato, parsnips or anything with an innate sweetness of that kind).
The word "versatile" doesn't come close.
If you leave out the onion it will keep for ages and is great to take on a picnic or for a snack with either cold rice or nice fresh bakery bread (pitta would be good … Joy loves to accompany it with pan de sal or to make adobo rolls).

Simple is always good and this dish is as simple as they come.
It is the first Pinoy dish Jong showed me how to make and the whole thing can be prepped, cooked and dished up in the time it takes the rice to steam.

First up: Ingredients:

Fatty pork (apologies to any Muslim or Jewish readers), goat, salmon, prawns, poultry, spare ribs are all great for this dish but I chose a nice organic pork tenderloin from Harvey's (Norwich's gloriously militant, anti-factory/chemical"food", real meat butchers), which I cut into biggish chunks.
Use as much as you fancy; I won't often resort to ounces or grams here.

It's just my own taste but if I am eating meat I will always buy organic and local.
Harvey's daily menu board will tell you the herds and farms that day's meat is from.
This little piggy is from a rare-breed farm only a couple of miles from my house and spent its happy life running wild in oak woodland, munching on acorns and wild herbs. Believe me when I say the taste and texture is sublime!

Jong suggests - wisely - that if you're cooking lean pork like this or especially lean beef, to start the pan off with a couple of chunks of fatty pork or a spare rib to ensure the meat stays tender and succulent. As I didn't have any to hand I used a splash of organic sunflower oil to provide the fat.
Don't use non-organic meat or the added water will make it stew instead of fry.

When Jong showed me how to make adobo he used six cloves of garlic for three of us and no onion; the way he would make adobo if it was to keep for later.
As there is only me here I am using two cloves of garlic and a smallish onion (again, all organic), rough chopped.
All of my dishes will be "cooking for one" unless I specifically say otherwise, so adjust your quantities accordingly.

Oh, the odd-looking knife is a Japanese ceramic knife. I've really become addicted to these of late.
I keep my big old Sabatiers for more violent and bloody forms of vegicide, but for subtle, ninja work I'll always use ceramic.
These babies are SHARP like you wouldn't believe! They make my Sabatiers feel like I'm cutting stuff with the edge of my hand.
Pricey, but good!

I stock up with purple garlic when the French Market swings by each month; it is great for everyday cooking - nicely balanced - but I personally prefer Portuguese or Turkish garlic … the hotter and drier the climate, the more intense the flavour.
And I do mean "intense", not "harsh". Good fresh garlic of this quality won't overpower a dish or leave you stinking; it will provide the deep, rich bass note that this dish is built upon.
Anybody thinking of using that ready-chopped garlic in a jar, puréed garlic or (God forbid) "garlic salt", kindly stand in the corner and slap yourself hard and repeatedly to save me the trouble.

To accompany adobo, traditionally sticky rice (not sushi rice though) and a soup or other moist dish is served to balance the wet and the dry.
Jong says that all Filipino cooking is based upon balance - balance of spices/flavours; balance of textures, etc. - something I wholeheartedly approve of.
Today I'll be using steamed jasmine rice and - as sinigang (the FANTASTIC, tamarind-based sour soup sometimes served with adobo) will be covered in a future recipe - I'll be using my favourite comfort food instead: a bowl of miso soup.
With rice, I always use way more than one cup per person because I am a pig and like to have lots of yummy rice left over to eat later.

To digress for a moment: one of my great joys and relaxations in life is washing rice. I'll stand there smiling for ages, happily swooshing the rice and replacing the water. It just feels so nice and is very therapeutic.
Of course, I don't have to do it for a living. That would suck.
I'm afraid I stopped using American rice years ago, when they could no longer guarantee it was free from GM contamination. I used to love California sushi rice but now I have to pay way over the odds for Japanese organic (which is utterly delicious).

Hokay … Here we go:
Jong used a normal saucepan for this; I used a wok. Anything concave that gets hot will do.

Heat it up.

First up: brown off the meat (high flame). I'll be assuming for these recipes that if I say something like "brown off the meat", or "reduce the stock", you'll know what I mean.

Next up I softened the onion and garlic (low flame) then tossed the pork back in with them (adjust the flame to however you feel … you don't want the dish to burn but you do want it to cook quickly. Keep an eye on it and adjust to suit … again, I am assuming you're not idiots).

Joy - with her Pinoy sweet tooth - and sometimes Jong would add sugar to adobo, but I have an innate loathing of processed foods like granulated sugar so to add a more natural sweetness I let the onion caramelise.

At this point I added a few big splooshes of good organic soy - I would guess at least a couple of shot-glasses worth - and let it reduce, stirring from time to time while I made the miso.
When it looks like the picture, it's done.

It was just about perfect when the rice was ready.

And here it is …
Adobong pork with jasmine rice and soup.

Have a go. It's simple, quick and way yummier than it looks (just like me).