The Filipino adobo

She candidly says she’s the self-proclaimed “Adobo Queen,” lest other people ask inquisitively who anointed her as such. And she has been collecting adobo recipes from everyone which will soon be a book with the same title: Everybody’s Adobo. Because she believes nobody has the right to standardize a national dish, a dish everyone claims they have a better version of.

Growing up with her cousins, all third generation members of the Engracia “Asiang” Reyes clan, they had a standard or a similar way of cooking adobo, the Lola Asiang way. But that is the Reyes version, not a national standard recipe. So you could have your own family style, your “lola handed down version” or a variation because you no longer fry it a second time, or you no longer add pork skin, or you add turmeric or another spice.

What made lola’s adobo different from other households was what soy sauce she put (a favorite brand), the vinegar she used (palm, coconut, rice or some other vinegar) and of course, the meat cuts chosen for this popular all-around viand. Nancy Reyes-Lumen calls adobo a “call sign” – she having suddenly shouted “adobo” while waiting at an airport in the US and many people looked and asked her why she said the magic word.

Adobo unites Filipinos. Adobo is like the Filipino – adaptable – and adobo is easily adoptable too as a favorite. It can be eaten anywhere, and it travels well (unlike sinigang soup, for example). You can have adobo cold over steamed hot rice, you can eat it topped on cold rice and wrapped in the natural preservative, banana leaves.

Nancy watched her Lola Asiang entertain suppliers of ingredients and shared that Lola was the original “market basket” expert – being able to buy even overripe bananas and mature tomatoes (the better to squish with your hands instead of slicing with a knife) and would help out vendors selling fruits that were about to spoil. She had a knack of cooking with these ingredients in her restaurant, the famous Aristocrat.

The war made Filipino cooks creative with ingredients and would and could cook anything that was available. That’s the “market basket” challenge – cooking without a recipe but turning out a dish with what you have.

My mother was a market basket expert, too, opening the ref and coming up with a new dish for a brood of eight children with whatever she had on hand. That was how our elders survived hard times like the war era, and this carried on even in peace times. Our mom would buy the most economical cut of beef or pork, or even the lowly ribs (buto buto), and produce her pork ribs soup which we thought was an adaptation from her father’s Hokkien recipe.

Yes, my maternal grandfather cooked, and so the boys in the family (all four brothers of mine) could cook and make their own original versions of Bob’s salmon sinigang, Sonny’s beef nilaga and even Vic’s hand-chopped longganisa. The fourth brother Fernando opened a restaurant and served our mom’s tapa and other favorite dishes.

Our grandparents and parents were the first to “reduce, reuse, recycle,” a trait passed on to many generations after, because of their need for survival during difficult times. That should actually be our dictum now – with gas prices going sky high, all the more we should practice austerity measures like our forefathers did.

Nancy was influenced by family to also get into cooking and thus is now writing and telling stories about food. She repeats what her Lola Asiang did, even if they are now called by fancy or Western names. One example is fermentation which is buro in the vernacular. Many had no refrigerators then so fermentation was a common way of preserving food. Just brine it or cure with salt and allow it to ferment.

Another term is confit, a French term for preserving meat. Our forefathers in Batanes would soak and keep adobo or fried meat pieces in lard, called luñis, just like a confit.

Third is drying with salt. The Batanes flying fish is dried using sea water, making it a mildly-salted dried fish or dibang.

Nancy shares these stories and more in her books and her guesting stints in shows on Youtube and other channels. I interviewed her for my podcast Good and Green to share her adobo stories, and more. She has gathered many recipes of adobo from Filipinos all over the world, using different ingredients like sugar beets of Lea Co, fish innards of Edith Singian and Macario Escaria’s adobo and saging saba lumpia (eggrolls with plaintain banana and adobo).

I remember Glenda Barretto cooking adobo in Stockholm and because the meat was so soft and tender, the local Pinoy vinegar almost shred it to pieces. I guess our Pinoy vinegar is perfect for our tough meats! In Sweden where the meat was certified organic, the vinegar was a tad too strong for Chef Glenda. “Adjust the vinegar,” I heard her say after testing the ingredients available locally. Balancing these components while cooking in a foreign land is Tita Glenda’s expertise.

In our family, my mother cooked adobo in our small apartment when we lived in New York City during martial law days. Our neighbors smelled the aroma, knocked on our door and we all got scared they would drive us out of the building. The waft of garlic and soy sauce and vinegar permeated our hallways. To our pleasant surprise, they asked us for a taste of whatever we were cooking. This is why adobo is the “go-to” recipe of every Filipino living abroad. My nephews, when they were toddlers, could be fed steamed rice and adobo sauce as they were too young to chew on meat pieces.

Nancy was witness to her Lola Asiang’s mindset of survival and her recipe for adobo. This is the secret to their Aristocrat’s success – a cook using ingredients straight from artisanal producers. And Nancy is around to document these recipes for everyone to enjoy.