The Ultimate Filipino Adobo: Stories Through the Ages

The 2nd edition of this book is available here.

Adobo is perhaps the default dish every Filipino would cook in times of emergency because the ingredients are always available, not just in the market but also the pantry of home kitchens. How can one make a mistake, in terms of blind measurement and approximation of ratio concerning soy sauce and vinegar? Is it always about intuition, muscle memory, and the memory of taste? Yes, it is embedded in our DNA.

Looking at some of the cooking techniques of our food, it all boils down to adobo, where protein is braised in a mixture of a salty-savory medium and an acid or souring agent, flavored by strong aromatics, and finally arrives at different states from flaky dry to oily, saucy and soupy.