Cooking with Arnold VII

"Attempted Adobo”

I knew I had to cook this sooner or later so why delay the inevitable? Will I burn the chicken? Will I mess it up? Read on.

Dinner started with a trip to Dominick’s (a grocery 2 blocks away). I picked up some chicken drumsticks, pepper grinder, Datu Puti suka, Silver Swan soy sauce (yup, they have it here) and bay leaves.

Let’s start by preparing the ingredients. I peeled and chopped garlic then washed and salted the chickens. I heated a saucepot and placed a generous portion of canola oil. Realizing that the chicken drumsticks won’t fit in the pot, I transferred the oil into a pan and sautéed the garlic. Smart!

The garlic turned dark brown. Uh oh… Classic Arnold.

I quickly put in the chickens and lowered the heat. After a few minutes, the chicken turned… yellow? Do chickens really turn yellow?

While the chickens were cooking, I prepared the pot where the chickens were supposed to be frying. I put in the vinegar, soy sauce, water, bay leaves and ground pepper. Now comes the first glitch of the night.

I bought the peppercorn with an attached grinder. This way I can have both ground pepper and whole peppercorns. The problem is that the grinder is attached permanently which means I can only grind the pepper to get them out. This means… no whole peppers. I ground some extra pepper to compensate. Does it work like that?

Oh no… the garlic is really getting burned! I placed the chickens, the burnt garlic and the cooking oil into the pot, covered it and prayed.

It doesn’t look like adobo. I’m worried.

After 10 minutes, I know I’m not supposed to peek but I’m reaaally curious. It still didn’t look anything like adobo. I think I better run to McDonald’s before they close.

After 35 minutes, I uncovered the pot and… my adobo looks like kare kare! Adobo is supposed to look dark brown right? Mine is light brown. I tasted the sauce and it was very sour… it tasted like sinigang!

I turned off the heat and started thinking of a way to fix this. The sauce needs to be dark and I need to counter the sour taste. This means I need something dark and something… sweet. I stood up and walked around, checked the cabinets, checked the fridge… dark and sweet… dark and sweet… dark and sweet… dark and sweet…

Coke.

I placed a can of Coca Cola into the dish. Look, I’m not a chef so I solve problems as logically as possible. It’s like in my tool box back home, I would only have two tools – duct tape and grease. If it moves but isn’t supposed to move, I use duct tape. If it doesn’t move but is supposed to move, I use grease. If something is sour, put coke. Life is simple.

I tasted the mess and hey, it’s not bad! The Coke really did the trick! I took out a plate, placed some rice and ate the chickens. After 30 minutes, I wasn’t poisoned! Louvre arrived home and tried the adobo. He said it’s good (but take note that he just had a lot of beers) though he says the adobo over at his house didn’t have this much liquid in it.

You can’t even taste the burnt garlic! I actually cooked something edible! Wow! I guess two (or more) wrongs really make a right.

The next day, I asked Jaye to guess what I had for dinner a) adobo; b) sinigang or c) kare kare ?

Answer: d) All of the above