Which came first the chicken or the egg?
Nobody knows. Actually I think it was the egg but
regardless it's a fairly unanswerable question just like which came first.
Filipino adobo or Spanish adobo?
But today in an effort to shed some light on the answer we will be making a chicken adobo from 1529.
So thanks to Trade Coffee for sponsoring this video as we look at the history of adobo.
This time on Tasting History.
June 12th is Filipino Independence Day which celebrates the Philippines independence
from Spain in 1898, though they didn't actually become really a full sovereign
nation for quite some time because America came in and while studying this I actually
found out that there was a huge gap in my American history education. I had never
unfortunately even heard of the Filipino-American War, one of America's longest and most brutal wars.
I don't know how that could possibly happen but I hadn't and that's not what this episode is about
but I do think it's a bit of an interesting and important piece of information to have so I'm
going to put some links in the description so you can learn about the Filipino-American War,
but today we are focusing on the Spanish influence on Filipino cuisine and possibly the Filipino influence on Spanish cuisine,
and we'll start by making a recipe for chicken adobo from 'El Libro de Cocina' by Ruperto de Nola.
Published in Catalonia in 1529.
"Potaje de Adobado de Gallina que se dice Janete de gallinas
Take a hen and cut it up into portions; take good fatty bacon, and gently fry it with a little onion.
Then gently fry the cut-up hen with it. And take toasted almonds, grind them and mix with quinces
or pears conserved in honey; and take the livers of hens and roast them on the coals.
And when they are roasted put them in the mortar with the almonds, and grind everything together.
And then take a piece of crustless bread toasted and soaked in white vinegar,
grind it in the mortar with the other things. And when it is well-ground, mix it with salted hen's broth;
and strain it through a sieve; and cast it in a pot; and cast the hen in also; and
cast in all fine spices and a good quantity of sugar. This sauce must be a little sour
and when the sauce is cooked cast in a little finely chopped parsley and prepare your dishes,
and then upon them sugar and cinnamon."
So this is definitely not your mother's adobo.
In fact this original Spanish word for adobo was actually adobado which I can
only surmise they changed because every time they said adobado it cued those weird muppets.
Adobado! Doo doo
So for this recipe what you'll need is three to four pounds or one and a half kilograms of chicken.
Three chicken livers,
a quarter pound or 120 grams of fatty European style bacon.
One chopped onion. One cup toasted almonds.
I bought toasted almonds that were already slivered,
but you can buy whole almonds and toast them yourself. They're getting blended up anyway
so it's all going to turn out the same way.
Two pears are quinces preserved in honey or syrup.
I actually found a place online that would sell pears conserved in honey from Spain which would
have been perfect, but it was eighty dollars for a jar like this and it was six weeks to get here so
I went with pears in syrup. The fact that we're blending this up with chicken liver
and vinegar I can't imagine that it's going to make too much of a difference, and definitely
not $80 difference.
One large thick slice of crustless bread lightly toasted on both sides.
1 cup or 235 milliliters of white wine vinegar. 1 quart or 1 liter of salted chicken broth.
3 or 4 teaspoons of fine spices. These are really up to you. It's not specific but
fine spices in Spain at the time would have been things like galangal, grains of paradise,
clove, nutmeg and long pepper. So I'm actually going to use a little bit of all five of those.
A quarter cup of sugar. 1 tablespoon minced parsley, and a little bit of cinnamon and sugar to garnish on top.
So first take the bacon and add it to a large frying pan over high heat. It should be
nice and fatty so it should turn just basically to grease which is perfect because then you can add
your onions and fry those for about five to seven minutes or until they become translucent.
Now this is going to heat up your kitchen and being in Los Angeles as I am It's already kind of warm here, so
I'm going to need something to cool me down which is why I'm enjoying a nice glass of cold brew from our sponsor Trade.
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Now I'm going to finish this and let's get back to our chicken.
So once your onions start to brown it's time to add your chicken. You want to make sure to get
each piece lightly browned, so you may want to turn them over a couple times keeping an eye on them as they cook.
Once the chicken is brown set it aside as we sauté our liver. Now
they are supposed to be cooked over hot coals, but who has hot coals? I bet Jon Townsend has hot
coals in his kitchen because he has a pretty sweet setup, but I don't so I'm doing them on a pan.
So take a small saucepan with a bit of fat or oil and then sauté your chicken livers
over medium heat for about three minutes on each side. While the livers cook put a slice of bread
in a large bowl and pour the vinegar all over it and leave it for a few minutes so it can soak up
as much vinegar as possible.
You want a nice thick piece of bread because you're hoping to soak up
pretty much that entire cup of white wine vinegar, and while that piece of bread becomes a vinegar sponge
sponge it's time to use a food processor to grind your almonds. Now you can do this with a
mortar and pestle. You need a very large mortar and pestle to grind the almonds but that's not
terribly hard, but it's going to get harder and kind of gross later on when we start adding like
the pears and and the livers and everything so use a food processor if you got it.
So grind the almonds up until you have a nice powder, and then add the pears and blend those.
Then take the livers off of the stove and toss them in as well.
The fact that we're grinding these livers means that I don't think it matters if they're done on coals
or in an oven or on a stove it's all ending up the same.
Then take the bread out of the vinegar and toss that in as well.
Also if there is any vinegar left hold on to it because you might be adding that later on in the process.
Finally pour in the salted chicken broth and blend everything together.
So now this is a Renaissance sauce, but this whole process is very Medieval: the spices, the sugar,
the vinegar, all quite Medieval and what's really Medieval is using bread as a thickener. Usually
it's done more as like bread crumbs and it can tend to kind of get gloopy but I think that the
way that it's being done here and the fact that we're about to sieve it it should turn out quite nice.
So position a fine mesh strainer over a stew pot and slowly pour the sauce through it.
If the strainer kind of gets full take a spoon and kind of agitate the stuff at the bottom and all
of the liquid should eventually make it through that strainer. Any dregs left over you can toss.
Then add in your spices and the sugar and stir everything together.
Now at this point you can taste it and if it doesn't taste a little bit sour because it should taste rather sour at this point
add the rest of that vinegar, or even add a little bit more. After all adobo, it should be vinegary.
Then add the cooked chicken and the onions and set it on the stove bringing it to a boil.
Then lower the heat and cover the pot and let it simmer for about 40 to 45 minutes or until the chicken is nice and tender.
Covering the pot is rather important at this point because
that vinegar smell is going to to really take over the kitchen if you don't. So cover the pot.
Now what makes this adobo different than modern Filipino or modern Spanish adobo has got to be
those spices that are being used and it's those spices that kick off our history of adobo.
So adobo today has kind of several meanings. It can mean to marinade, it can mean kind of used
as a sauce or as a braising liquid, and then there are lots of variations even within those
definitions but the one thing that they all have in common is vinegar, and that makes sense because
it comes from the word adobar which means to marinate in vinegar. Actually interestingly enough
that word comes from the Medieval french word adouber which meant to give a sword and shield to
a knight, and even today it can mean to dub a knight which I think is kind of cool.
I'm just wondering how that turned into marinating vinegar into chicken dish or meat dish or
whatever kind of adobo you want,
but it's that meaning of adobar the marinating in vinegar that
is important because marinating meats in vinegar was a great way to preserve them for long journeys
like the one that started on September 20th 1519.
A feisty young or rather kind of middle aged for the 16th century Portuguese explorer
Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Spain in a quest for spices.
Funded by King Charles I of Spain, Magellan was tasked with finding a western route to the Moluccas
or the Spice Islands now part of the Indonesian archipelago.
They were the only place in the entire world at the time that grew cloves. Can you imagine loving cloves that much that you would
go all the way around the world? Also can you imagine the look on their face when they
see what we do with cloves around Christmas time? Those are called pomanders and they actually have
a rather interesting history maybe something I should cover around Christmas
but anyway Magellanwas essentially sailing all the way around the world the long way because the Portuguese were
in the way going going East just for spices. The Spanish they loved those spices.
Now the trip started off nice enough they actually spent Christmas partying it up in Rio de Janeiro.
Really they actually did that. Then they had a nice relaxing sail down the South American coast
but then they ran into some bad weather and Easter brought on a mutiny as it so often does and then
they had some desertion a shipwreck and just some light starvation.
Now when they left Spain they had an estimated two years of food on the ship including a lot of vinegar preserved meat, adobo.
But turns out that the Pacific Ocean is rather large and so all the food kind of got used up.
They were even about to run out of their ship's biscuits.
"We only ate old biscuit reduced to powder, and full of grubs,
and stinking from the mess which the rats had made on it while eating the good biscuit,
and we drank water that was yellow and stinking.
We also ate the ox hides which were under the main yard... also the sawdust of wood and rats which cost half a crown each..."
That's some expensive rat meat. I don't think I would do well at sea. [Forgets he worked on Disney Cruise Line...]
Also a lot of people died from scurvy though Magellan himself seemed untouched and that's possibly due to the fact that he had
a large store of preserved quinces in honey just like is called for in today's recipe,
though I'm using pears of course because I can't find any quinces
but for those sailors who weren't the captain of the ship they had to wait until they found land to to get some decent food,
and the first port of call was Guam. Though there wasn't actually a lot of food to be had because
the people who were living in Guam at the time came aboard the Spanish ship and just stole a
bunch of their stuff leading Magellan to name the island Isla de los Ladrones, Island of Thieves,
which in hindsight was probably the best course of action.
But eventually on March 16, 1521 Magellan arrived at what he named las Islas de Poniente,
the islands to the West, the future Philippines.
And there the inhabitants were very welcoming and more than glad to share their food.
"At noon on Friday, March 22nd those men came... in two boats with coconuts, sweet oranges, a jar of palm-wine,
and a rooster, in order to show us that there were chickens in that district... Those people became
very familiar with us in order to show them greater honor, the captain-general took them to his ship
and showed them all his merchandise - cloves, cinnamon, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, mace, gold,
and all the things on the ship."
I love that in the whole list of things that he showed them gold was last.
After all the spices, that's how important spices were to these Spaniards
and actually spices would have been somewhat impressive to the native Filipinos because
they had probably never seen them before because they didn't really grow on the Philippine islands.
Instead "They eat coconuts, camotes, birds, figs one palmo in length,
sugarcane, and flying fish, besides other things... coconuts are the fruit of the palm tree just as we have bread
wine oil and milk so those people get everything from that tree. They get wine in the following manner.
They bore a hole into the heart of the said palm... from which distills a liquor which resembles white must.
That liquor is sweet but somewhat tart and is gathered in canes of bamboo as thick as the leg and thicker."
By the way that fig one palmo in length is better known today as a banana,
but it's the liquor from that coconut palm today called tubâ which is important to our adobo story,
because it's also how they made a very important ingredient for adobo: vinegar.
"When they wish to make vinegar, they allow only the palm water to putrefy,
and then place it in the sun and a vinegar results like that from white wine."
Now while Pigafetta the sailor who wrote all that down does mention both of the ingredients necessary for adobo:
meat and vinegar we don't really get a good glimpse of what they're actually making until 1613.
In one of the earliest Tagalog dictionaries compiled by Franciscan missionary
Pedro de San Buena Ventura he mentions 'adobo de los naturales.'
'Adobo of the native people', and that's likely a reference to what he ends up calling cqilao which
he describes as salt, vinegar, chili peppers which were new to the islands and fresh fish or
meat like carabao. The dish is still made today made with fish and it's called kinilaw and it
gets another mention in an 18th century dictionary in the sort of form of a poem.
"When the kinilao is finished and the wine is emptied the friendship is ended."
Oh that was way harsh Ty.
Now we have our meat marinated in vinegar on the Spanish ship and we have our meat marinated in vinegar on
the Philippine islands both created completely independently of each other each culture having
developed their own version of adobo and over the next 300 years they're going to influence each other.
Like the recipe that we're using today doesn't use vinegar as a marinade as much as it
does a braising liquid and then a sauce which the Philippines took and really ran with and made a
wide assortment of adobos.
Adobos, adobe what's the plural?
Adobos I'm going to go with adobos.
One such adobo is adobong pusit which is squid adobo and it's made with squid ink which while
they obviously had squid back in Spain they didn't really use it much in cooking until some Jesuit
missionaries who had been in the Philippines brought the practice back with them and now in
the Basque region many many dishes are made with squid ink.
There are also different colored adobos like adobong dilaw, adobong pula, adobong puti,
which I think is probably the closest to the one that we're making today albeit quite different,
a lot less cinnamon and well it's different but the closest.
Now the most popular adobo in the Philippines today and what you'll probably
get at a Filipino restaurant is made with soy sauce which was brought over by the Chinese long
before any Spanish ships came to call and that's really the story of Filipino cuisine inn general.
They have their own core cuisine but then lots of influences from the other cultures that came
to the islands: the Chinese, the Japanese, the Spanish, the Americans. There's even a dish called
kare kare which is based on a Indian curry with peanuts which probably came to Manila in the 1760s
by Indian sepoys when the British occupied the city during the Seven Years War.
So which came first: Filipino adobo or Spanish adobo? Both? Neither? I feel like at this point their existence
is inexorably linked like Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort.
And the adobo that we're making today
is very much related but doesn't really belong in the same world kind of like the Fantastic Beasts movies,
but hopefully the adobo is even better.
So once your adobo has simmered toss in the parsley
and stir letting it cook for just another minute or two.
Then serve up a plate of the chicken along with a bit of the sauce and garnish it with just a bit of cinnamon and sugar on top.
And here we are chicken adobo from 1529.
I'm going to start with a leg. Let's go.
So it's cool because the vinegar scent really I found like it wasn't there all that much
but you can definitely taste it but it's not mean it's not maine vinegar. It's not harsh
because you're getting all these other spices in there and it's sweet. There's sugar in it but
it's also that pear I'm thinking. Again I don't think it would have mattered if the pear had been
in honey, not for 80 bucks, but it's definitely got that sweetness but then it also has the vinegar
which is interesting because the the soy sauce adobo that is typical in the Philippines today
has that vinegar and has that sweetness so I kind of wonder if there wasn't a bit of exchange
of flavors and ideas of how to make it there and the texture is really, really nice like it's it
just falls off the bone. It's cooked really well. I think a little bit more sauce and I think put
on some rice that is definitely the way to go.
Now Anthony Bourdain did a great episode on adobo and in it
he asked the person who was cooking it 'who makes the best adobo? What's the best adobo? And
the guy was like 'my mother's' and Anthony Bourdain said 'yes, the best adobo is your mother's adobo.'
Anybody's mother's adobo. So if your mom makes adobo or if you make adobo share the images with
me on on Instagram @ tastinghistorywithmaxmiller. I love it when people send me food pictures or if
you make this adobo definitely send that as well.
So thanks again to Trade coffee for sponsoring this video, link is in the description,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
*Check out Ketchup with Max and Jose Youtube channel for behind the scenes of past episodes*