Today was a gloomy, overcast-all-day day. No rain until around 10pm though. High was 27 degrees. The high for the past two days was 29 degrees. Today felt like Tagaytay, whereas a month or two ago it felt like Baguio. I was just in a shirt (and undershirt) the whole day, even outdoors, and even during the evening.
Lunch today was the Hainanese chicken I prepared yesterday. So it's not great. But it's not bad. Ate it with oyster sauce and ginger, romaine lettuce and tomatoes with Italian dressing and bacon-flavored bits, and chicken soup - the one I cooked the chicken in. The soup tastes really good. With some other vegetable in lieu of young papaya, I could've had Tinolang Manok instead!
Anyways, one of the things I did today was... cook! Again!
I was prepared to cook Pork Adobo, having bought all necessary ingredients already. The only problem was I haven't ever cooked Adobo before, and I didn't have any idea how to cook it. I searched the internet and here were my candidate recipes:
http://www.recipehints.com/recipe/448.html
http://www.myfilipinorecipes.com/meat/
http://www.grouprecipes.com/5406/pork-adobo.html
I have to mention I like what the first link above says: "There are as many adobo recipes as there are Filipinos. Maybe more. I certainly have more than one." That is so true. I know at least of these varieties:
Regular Pork Adobo - dark and salty
Regular Chicken & Pork Adobo
Light (Chicken &) Pork Adobo - not so salty
Pork Adobo Flakes
Adobo with Gata - a little spicy, with coconut milk
Pampanga-style Adobo - uses tomatoes
Mindanao-style Adobo (i.e. with ginger)
"Italian" Adobo - actually this is my mom's recipe; it has a special secret ingredient that I won't share just yet right now :-D
Basically I like my mom's Adobo recipe the most. So I thought instead of having to decide from among those thousands of Adobo recipes available out there on the internet which to use, I decided to ask my mom for her recipe. And I was surprised it was much simpler to do than all those other recipes I found. The finished product: looks like the real thing. Almost. My mom usually uses the liempo (belly?) part and in relatively small portions. The pork I bought are sized for stew or Nilaga. And, well actually my mom's recipe all says that almost every ingredient is proportioned "to taste." I think I put too much vinegar. We'll see tomorrow. Many have said that Adobo tastes better the day after (i.e. let it sit overnight first) anyway. And well, this is a world record - it's my very first Adobo attempt! :-D
Anyways, I also cooked Sinigang na Baboy. That's the 2nd time now since coming here, the 3rd time here in Japan (the 1st time being back in 2005), and the 3rd time all time (as in I haven't ever cooked Sinigang while in the Philippines). This time around I cooked 1 kg of pork. And guess what. My pot was too small. So before putting the remaining veggies (kang kong) in I transfered everything to my wok pan first.
Yup, kang kong. Or water spinach. Or swamp cabbage. I bought them yesterday, and I wasn't sure if it was kang kong that I bought! I've never ever seen uncooked kang kong (or I've seen them but never really noticed/memorized how they look like). But when the cooking process was over, my Sinigang looks exactly like my mother's. And the vegetable that I wasn't sure if it was kang kong or not, looked like cooked kang kong inside the Sinigang. Amen! I'm excited to taste this batch of Sinigang.
So I have Postek good for two meals. Hainanese chicken, good for one more meal. Sinigang, good for maybe three meals. And Adobo, maybe good for just one meal. So overall, if I eat Filipino food for lunch and dinner, I'm covered until Thursday lunch! :-)
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