Mix garlic, vinegar, fish sauce, soy sauce, and black pepper (and bay leaf, if using). Add chicken and/or pork (for this amount of marinade, better use about 3 lbs of pork if making pork adobo without chicken). Let marinate for several hours, if possible -- pork especially benefits from several hour marination. Then bring to a boil and cook until chicken is nearly done (but boil pork until tender and ready to eat). (Watch out you don't cook chicken until *too* tender or it will fall apart when you fry it next).

When ready, remove all meat pieces from the liquid, reserving the liquid. Fry the pieces of meat, a few at a time, in deep hot oil until crispy, removing each to a serving dish when it is crisp. (You can put them in a warm oven to keep warm).

When frying is finished, pour out the excess oil, add the reserved marinade to the frying pan to deglaze, bring the liquid to a boil, and reduce a little.

Return crispy meat pieces to warm marinade immediately before serving, or simply serve meat and sauce separately to ensure meat remains crispy.

Serve with steamed rice.

NOTE: GARLIC:
The original Philippine recipe calls for 1-2 *heads* of garlic, so don't worry about getting too much garlic. One variation that is possible if the garlic is lightly crushed is to remove it after boiling the meat and brown it in the oil (to be later returned to the serving dish) before frying the meat. If the garlic is minced or finely crushed, removing the garlic to fry it is impractical. FYI, Luisa doesn't brown the garlic.

NOTE: FISH SAUCE, SOY SAUCE, SALT:
Fish sauce, soy sauce, and salt all supply saltiness; soy sauce also provides color, as does fish sauce to a lesser degree. The important thing is to adjust the amounts of these ingredients so the whole thing isn't too salty, which of course all depends on exactly how much meat you use and how salty your soy and fish sauces are.

You can replace part or all of the fish sauce by plain salt, depending on your mood (but please don't eliminate all of it!). Of course, if you reduce or eliminate the fish sauce, you should increase the soy sauce a bit so there is still some color.

NOTE: VINEGAR:
Vinegar made from sap of the nipa palm (from the Philippines, available in any Asian market) is by far the best vinegar to use. To help in identifying, it is somewhat milky in color. This has a wonderful flavor and is the best vinegar to use as a dipping sauce for egg rolls, etc., too.

Next best would be 'ordinary' Philippine vinegar or a good white wine vinegar, if you don't have palm vinegar. Use plain white (clear) distilled vinegar only as a last resort, and be careful about the amount you use, since distilled vinegar is stronger (more acidic) than palm or wine vinegar.

NOTE: SAUCE:
Since the sauce is normally somewhat salty, usually each person takes only a little sauce -- so it is normal to have more sauce than needed.

NOTE: BAY LEAF:
Luisa doesn't add bay leaf.

From:  Luisa Lagmay Thompson
Posted By: Brent Thompson, Via: Chile Head Mailing List
Post Date:   Mon, 20 Sep 1999