MOM'S PORK ADOBO

Ingredients:

1 kilo pork liempo (pork belly)
½ cup vinegar (suka)
6 Tablespoons soy sauce (toyo) or ¼ cup plus 2 Tablespoons
2 Tablespoon fish sauce (patis)
½ cup water
½ of a whole garlic, peeled and crushed
freshly cracked black pepper (about 10 peppercorns or more if desired)
1 dahon ng laurel (laurel leaf)
cooking oil
½ of a whole garlic, peeled and crushed

Procedure:

1. This is a recipe for those who have the time to marinate overnight or at least 3 hours. If you don’t have the time, please follow my dry adobo recipe, that’ll be adobo recipe number 2…

2. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and marinate. Please just avoid using the aluminum metal ones because when that bowl turns gray, that’ll mean some of it is in your meat. Yikes!!! Please get a glass bowl, a ceramic bowl or a plastic ware, choose the sturdy brands please…

3. Like I said, marinate overnight or for at least 3 hours to let that seep into your pork. You can poke you pork with a fork to let the marinade in.

4. The next day or after 3 hours you are ready to cook in a stainless steel sauce pan, a non-stick sauce pan or a glassware sauce pan. Just put all the ingredients together. Just an aside: 1 laurel leaf is to 1 kilo of meat, but when cooking a half kilo only, you can use the whole leaf.

5. Important note for first time cooks: Please DO NOT stir until the marinade boils as this will cause your adobo to taste acidic or plainly put in Tagalog, hilaw or uncooked. There is no remedy for this. Whoever you’re serving this to will just have to grin and bear it!!!

6. Now some think that the adobo is cooked when the boiling starts and the meat becomes a little tender. That will have to be nilagang baboy (boiled pork) in a dark sauce. As this is our all-time favorite adobo, let’s lower the heat when the liquid starts to boil so we can start the process of tenderizing the pork. If you get pork from the supermarket this may take only about 20 minutes. If you happen to buy tough pork meat, you just have to cook a bit longer, maybe 30 minutes or even an hour. The key is to check…check…check with a fork. When the pork is fork tender but not falling apart tender please, you can now drain the meat. Set aside the liquid where the meat was cooked for use later. Remove the cooked garlic bits and the cracked black pepper bits to minimize being attacked by flying bits and fragments of these when you start doing the next step…

7. You guessed it right; the next step is to fry the meat so you lock in all that gorgeous flavor. So you need lotsa cooking oil to deep fry that meat to a golden brown color or you can put some oil and pan fry the meat. Since there will still be bits of the garlic and peppercorn stuck in the meat somewhere, you will experience some popping while you fry the meat either way. Don’t be scared, my aunt used to wear a raincoat when frying during her first year of cooking and that’s no joke. But of course you can turn off the heat first before stirring and turning the meat around, or if you’re brave, lower the heat, then use the pan cover as shield and start stirring. You can use a tong to turn the meat.

8. When your meat is all golden brown, remove from the pan. From that oil you used to fry, just leave enough to sauté the other half of that one whole garlic which you’ve crushed combined with the bits of the one you got earlier. Put back your fried meat. Now slowly, put the liquid you set aside earlier. Please DO NOT pour all that liquid in because by now you’re rushing. This will slow you down more. By putting the liquid slowly, you allow this to simmer and thicken as you add more. This will give you a saucy adobo.

9. When you’re done, you can serve you saucy adobo with chopped tomatoes and chopped green mangoes. And you can use your hands to dig into that adobo with great abandon…