How to Make Chicken and Pork Adobo

Now my kids call me to ask for recipes of stuff I used to make when they lived at home. In some way I feel that I have reached some great milestone in life, and I am passing on the torch, or more specifically, a revered family secret.... my recipe for chicken and pork adobo.

Miguel, my oldest son, was the origin of this request. Every so often he fancies himself the family chef. He watches Alton Brown on Food TV and decides that if he approaches cooking from a science and chemistry perspective, it is a manly enough endeavor. One year, he decided to brine the thanksgiving turkey. He went through every pot, pan, bucket, and tub we had in the house mixing solutions and then getting a 20 pound bird to soak in it.

So here, Miguel, is how you make chicken and pork adobo. First of all, you get some chicken. Now I could never deal with cutting up an entire chicken and the pre-cut ones always had these extra "parts" that I was never sure of, not to mention all these little chicken bone chards and chips that come with mass chopped chickens. Thus, I would just buy legs and thighs. They come in nice packages of 6 so its all very balanced.

Now you get the pork. In the Philippines, where this dish originates, pork fat is plentiful and cheap. Over there, the problem is trying to find some meat to go with the fat. In the U. S. we have the opposite problem, trying to find some fat to go with the meat. A safe bet is boneless pork spare ribs. Cut these up into one inch cubes (smaller cooks faster). Try to make sure each cube has some fat in it. This is the joyful part of the pork in the adobo. The grease from the fat has round molecules so they just burst with flavor as they roll around your taste buds.

Find a large enough pot and put the chicken and pork pieces in it. Now add about a half cup of soy sauce and a half cup of apple cider vinegar. Make sure all the meat is in the liquid, add more if you need it. Figure out if you prefer a soy saucy taste or a vinegary taste and add accordingly. Get a jar of minced garlic and add a teaspoon or two of it to the mixture. If you decide to use real garlic, you will need a whole head. This will be very messy and the smell of garlic will stick to your fingers for days. None of the helpful hints to remove the smell will work.

Add a little salt and a lot of black pepper. Once, one of our cooks asked me to get her a list of ingredients at the grocery. I couldn't figure out what she was going to make with black paper.... It is best if you have a grinder and can coarsely grind the pepper. One of my grandmother's cooks would use whole pepper seeds and whole garlic cloves. Eating her adobo, you had to be vigilant or find one of these "bombs" go off in your mouth. Of course there are those who believe this is the only way to eat it. It is up to you.

Okay, now take this whole pot and set in on the stove to cook at a medium heat. The chicken and pork juices should start to cook out and join with the soy sauce and vinegar mixture. When all is pretty well cooked, remove the pot from the fire. Use a big slotted spoon or some tongs to remove the meat from the mixture. Place the meat in a glass pyrex rectangular dish, the size we use to make brownies. Drizzle about a quarter cup of vegetable oil over the meat. Be sure to save the soy sauce/vinegar mixture. If you throw this away...... don't even think of it.

Heat the oven up to 375 degrees and place the meat in the pyrex dish in it uncovered. The meat will start to crisp. Keep checking it. When the entire top is crisped, remove the dish (don't forget to use oven mitts!) and use tongs to turn every piece of meat over so you can return it to the oven and crisp the bottom side. I learned this from your yaya, Maling. The traditional way, which Tita Flory used, was to fry the meat in oil in a saucepan on the stove top..... really messy, there will be oil all over the stove and kitchen. This is why many Filipino houses smell like adobo.

Any way, when the meat is crisped all over, turn off the oven and add the oily crispy meat back to the pot with the soy sauce/vinegar mixture and heat the whole thing up. Serve over white sticky rice. Feel free to play with the portions. I'm sorry that I never learned to cook with a set recipe. Besides, experimenting with the flavors is the fun part. If you try this often enough, you will eventually make a really yummy pot of adobo.

Mele Kalikimaka

Okay, so it's a few days after Christmas. But remember when it wasn't just Christmas Day that we celebrated but the whole season? It used to be at least a solid month of Christmas carols, shopping, partying and merrymaking. We used to also do stuff that would seem insanely inconvenient now. Remember the "Misa de Gallo"? Mass of the rooster? You went to mass before dawn, right when the roosters started crowing. Now for the most part, this was no fun, but when you got to a certain age and became interested in the opposite sex, this afforded great opportunity to make early social engagements while showing the adults your pious commitment to the season. By the time one was a young adult, this could be combined with late night partying for all night to dawn marathon of holiday celebration. The best was that it ended with the church's blessings and an all day nap.

Now this could only take place during that special time when you were young enough to be going to school but old enough to be allowed to stay up past midnight. The reality of jobs, children, and anything that smacked of responsibility meant that the all night merry making had to go and then you were stuck with merely rising to go to mass in the middle of the night.

Now, I find it difficulat to find the time to go to church on Sundays at the very reasonable time of 9 am. I confess that when Meet The Press started airing at 9 am, the same time as Sunday Mass in Mountain View, political discussions amongst the pundits and talking heads wins. When you become used to airing all sides of every issue, it becomes painful to sit through lectures that cannot be questioned. Faith is one of those things that has to be complete. Any little nagging doubts take over and you find yourself holding mental arguments with your parish priest while you pretend to be in submissive agreement.

My parents had faith. Many of my friends and former schoolmates have faith that strikes me as incredible in this day and age. I admire them and see that it brings great peace of mind. For the time being, I shall have to make do with honesty. The honesty of my doubts and the honesty of my desire to make sense out of a world of randomness and difficulties.

For the New Year, I am trying to have resolve so I can finally have some resolutions that I can keep. But instead of trying to change something about myself, I'll just try to do things differently. Like resolving to blog at least once a week. There you have it.

Oh, as an aside, I am watching CNN and the news reporter is at the Philippine Airlines check-in counter at LAX. She is astounded at the numbers and gargantuan sizes of all the LBC boxes going to Manila!

Hoy! .... Any New Blogs?

Just to let you all know where the hell I've been:

First, I live on the Big Island of Hawaii, with my husband and two dogs. Our business is on the Kona side, sunny and touristy. Our house is on the Hilo side, rainy and.... provincial.
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We have, at this time, three (3!) vehicles. A Chevy Tahoe in reasonable condition, a Jeep Wrangler under the curse of an evil, evil (or maybe really just horribly incompetent) mechanic, and a GMC Jimmy held hostage by the Hawaiian DMV. In other words, we can only drive the Tahoe.

So, we don't just drive back and forth as we please. We have to make major plans that involve both of us going everywhere together. Last week, we were in Kona, taking care of business so no computer time. Then Scott's 85 year old mother went to the hospital with sepsis. He then went to see her for what might be the last time, and took the computer with the internet connection with him... to California.

So now, I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Pahoa, the Hawaiian wild, wild, west. The folks here are tattooed and dreadlocked. The hemp plant is the official flower. These are the inheritors of the hippie generation. Some of them appear to be original hippies. Seated next to me are a table of travelers with backpacks, from Europe, on their way to Tibet, discussing "society" as if it were a horrible boarding they had just escaped. I am feeling way too normal and suburban in my yoga pants and hoodie. Next time I come... I shall not bathe... or brush my hair... or shave. I'll wear long flowing skirts and a tank with no bra. I'll wear all my beads, bracelets, bangles, and earrings. I'll have to get a tattoo and some piercings.

Ah forget it.... I'll just look like some 50 year old time traveler. Besides, I'll never be able to decide on a tattoo.

Will be back on schedule and blogging again by weekend. Stay tuned.

Barrister Barrista

2007 was not a good year. In February, my father was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. In October he was dead.

By December, I could not continue to function as an attorney. In between composing my letters and declarations, I found myself surfing the Internet. I became addicted to shopping for a business to buy: fast food, clothing, electronics store, sail boat rentals, arugula farm... Each one promised a fascinating, care free, new life.

By February, Scott and I began our move to Kona, Hawaii, where we had just bought a souvenir shop. Bad as 2007 was, 2008 was worse. The economic downturn went into a spiraling freefall and we lost the business. But, my coffee and chocolate supplier asked me to take over operation of his coffee shop in downtown Kailua-Kona, and all of a sudden I was a barrista.

I had never worked in a coffee shop before but had frequented many. My dad was an espresso addict so we had spent lots of time sipping cappuccinos and lattes in trendy upscale coffee spots. I knew what I liked and I liked good coffee.... with lots of cream and sugar.

Learning to operate a coffee shop has a quick but steep learning curve. The equipment was big, black, and imposing with shiny silver knobs and spouts. This was serious stuff. I learned to grind beans, measure the coffee, brew big pots of black gold. This was Kona, whose volcanic soils, cloud cover, altitude, and sunny days brought forth some of the most sought after and expensive coffee in the world.

This could be fun. I learned to make cold coffee drinks: iced coffee, iced lattes (actually a misnomer but that's another story), and frappes. Unfortunately, the espresso machine was not operational. No problem, if anyone asked for an espresso drink, "Sorry, our machine is down". And customers took this well. No one was offended or threatened to report me to the state bar for sanctions.

Every October, Kona hosts the premiere Ironman event in the world. This one is the mecca for all serious tri-athletes. The course consists of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bicycle ride, and a 26.2 mile run through tough ocean waves and moon like lava-covered terrain. For one week,around ten thousand tri-athletes, trainers, sports media, and entourage descend upon this little town whose center, heart, and soul was our dinky little pier. All at once, our quiet streets were packed with bulging, biceps, quads, calves, and triceps. The Speedo clad strutted around next to the aloha shirt and Bermuda shorts crowd.

The night before the Ironman event, Fix-it Frank showed up with my new espresso machine. "Now you gonna be a real coffee shop", he announced. I didn't know I wasn't. He fiddled around with washers and hoses and birthed a steaming, spouting, machine that espressed, and frothed, and scalded. Very imposing, but he showed us how to press buttons, turn knobs, and make espresso. We stayed at the shop up to midnight, getting ready for the next day. Hans, our part time help, promised me he had worked in restaurants and coffee shops and knew everything to know about the barrista business. We would meet at the shop at 5:00 am the next day, to prepare for an onslaught of customers. Our shop was steps from the start and finish lines; we were practically ground zero.

At 3:00 am, my eyes flew open. A disturbing thought jolted me up. "Scott!" I poked my deeply snoring husband. "Do you know how to make cappuccino?!"

He grunted, peered at me through one bleary eye, "hrnnngmphno", he slurred, and rolled over back to sleep.

"We're screwed!", I thought, as I stumbled out of bed to the laptop where I entered, "How to make cappuccino". Angels sang as pages of coffee sites appeared. I began my predawn research. One part espresso, one part steamed milk, one part froth. We can do it. I went back to sleep.

Two hours later, I am perched behind Scott on our little red moped, clinging for my life as we wind through the traffic barriers into town. In the 5:00 am dark, we can make out crowds... throngs of people, carrying chairs and cameras, making their way to the start line. All in need of some kind of caffeine.

We snuck into the shop but people followed after us, tapping on the glass doors, "Coffee? Coffee?"

"Don't open yet", I told Scott. "We have to practice!"

We took turns steaming and frothing until we could hold our waiting, caffeine starved customers off no longer. Scott opened the doors, and the lines formed. "Double, half-caff, skinny caramel! Single cappuccino non-fat! Double Mocha latte!" I ground, espressed, steamed, and frothed. Scott ground, espressed, steamed, and frothed. We served espresso dairy mixtures. Lord knows what we were making, as we capped drink after drink. The lines were long and there was no time for complaints or even tasting their drinks as customers hurried out the doors to catch a good spot for the start of the swim event.

Then the lines disappeared. "Come up to the roof!" One of the other vendors shouted to us. "Everyone's watching the start! Just close up the shop and come up!"

So we locked the store and went up on the rooftop balcony of the Kona Inn Shopping Village and saw before us, one of the most glorious sights of Kailua-Kona. Thousands of swimmers were bobbing in the bay. Thousands of spectators were standing on the beach and sitting on the bay wall. Helicopters and emergency boats were hovering and floating nearby. The sky was blue and cloudless. The sun was warm and golden. The energy was electrifying. Then the loudspeakers quieted, the Hawaiian prayers were chanted, the conch was blown, and the race was on.

We reopened and actually had some time to think about what we were doing. Hans never showed up (I found out later he had determined I was too bossy). We made more cappuccinos, lattes, and mochas although I seriously suspect that every drink we made really was a latte, some indeterminate mixture of espresso, steamed milk, and froth. But the Ironman was on. Everyone cheered all day long as athletes clambered back onto shore, got on their bicycles to ride out towards wind-blown Kohala, and then tossed their bikes away to run down through Kona and past our shop to the finish line. The athletes continued past the shop till midnight, panting, sweating, some limping. One had a prosthetic leg. All who finished were victorious. We felt victorious too.

Thanks, But......No Thanks

While today is Thanksgiving and a day for family and friends to come together to reflect gratefully on their blessings, we must constantly remain vigilant for the evil that lurks within us. I have practiced juvenile dependency law and family law for 15 years and thought I had seen everything, but truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes it is the truth in your own life that is strangest of all.

After every holiday, comes an increase of allegations of abuse against children by friends or family members. For obvious reasons, the combination of food, family togetherness, and alcohol can lead to impaired judgment among people we should most be able to trust. Working as minors' counsel, I have seen too many holidays end with detentions and filings of domestic abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. It is the sexual abuse that is most insidious and unforgivable as it masquerades as love.

This came home to me this year as two supposedly dear members of my extended circle of friends were revealed to be predatory sexual perverts. These were men who were looked up to and admired within our communities. Men who were successful and appeared to have everything in life. Men who had beautiful wives and were the envy of all around them.

I was astounded and horrified by the revelations. The worst thing was that I was not really surprised. Did you ever know someone who just made you feel uncomfortable? Someone who complimented you profusely but looked at you just a little too long? Maybe there was something in that look that was just....wrong. I would call this the "ick" factor. My legal training demands that every person be given the benefit of the doubt until the evidence was in. I change my mind. The "ick" factor is usually spot on right. Let the judge and jury apply the law. When it comes to the children in my life, I am relying on my gut instinct.

One of these men was actually arrested and is now serving a very long prison sentence. But the other one is out and about and unaware that some of us know. Now, there is just not quite the right set of facts for a criminal or civil filing for this particular molester. Also, we love his wife and children and do not want them to bear the embarrassment of finding out. But he should be placed on notice. We know what he did.

So this Thanksgiving, I will be giving thanks for many things... but trust will not be one of them.

Huy and Hoy

Communicating in Filipino is fun. I make no claims to speaking any of the Filipino dialects fluently but second best is sounding like you do. First thing to learn is how to "capture" someone's attention. There is "psssst." This is a soft hiss, meant only for the intended recipient of attention-capturing who might not even hear it but senses something in the atmosphere causing him to turn his head this way and that until he sees the hisser. The hissing is then acknowledged by exaggerated lifting of the eyebrows.

Then there is "SSSutttt!", with heavy emphasis on the ssss and ttttt. Dog Whisperer uses this to alert dogs to unwanted behavior. But Filipino parents have used this for centuries to alert their children to parental surveillance. with practice, the "SSSuttt" can be so loud as to be heard across a restaurant or department store. It means "Stop that, now!" The recipient of the "SSSuttt" instinctively drops everything and flinches at this sound. Perhaps because it can sometimes be accompanied by a "batok", a light but swift whack to the back of the head.

"Huy" and "Hoy" are other attention grabbers. "Huy" is more surreptitious and could indicate something conspiratorial like "Huy, can I copy your homework?". "Hoy" is outraged. "Hoy! Stop copying my homework!

The practice of these four sounds will surprise the market vendors in Hilo and Kona. They love to prattle in their native Filipino dialects, secure in their belief that no one understands them. Be indignant at their prices, "Hoy, that's too expensive! You think I'm rich?" And then follow with, "Huy, give me a discount, okay?"

Minor Matters

Most of you know that after graduating from Law
School, I spent the next 15 years representing children in Juvenile Dependency Court and Family Law Court. I represented children who were abandoned, neglected, beaten, raped, molested, exposed to illegal drugs, and exposed to domestic violence. They ranged in age from newborns to seventeen (sometimes as old as 23) years old.

I was their voice in court. It was a voice in the dark.

Malina (not her real name) was five years old when she saw her father kill her mother by drowning her in the family bathtub. The father was sent away for life in Pelican Bay, his parental rights were terminated and Malina was adopted. When Malina was eight, her adoptive mother returned Malina to the courts and terminated the adoption. Malina had been exhibiting strange behavior; she liked knives. The adoptive mother awoke one night to find Malina standing over her with a knife in her hand. Malina spent the rest of her childhood in group homes.

Malina was 15 when I was appointed to take over her representation from a retiring attorney. She was a pretty bi-racial girl with a beautiful smile and a charming demeanor but her social worker had written in her report that Malina was manipulative and conniving. All Malina wanted from the court was the ability to spend time with her "grandmother", a woman who had been godmother to her ex-adoptive mother.

The court allowed only monitored visits. Malina was on all kinds of psychotropic medication. She was failing in almost every subject in school. She refused to take her meds because they made her sluggish. No one trusted her; no one listened to her. I set her up for a review of medications, counseling, and I offered to monitor the visits with "grandma". None of that took place. A few weeks after I first met her, Malina went AWOL.

Two years went by where Malina's review hearings consisted of renewing her warrants for detention. Then a new case came into court, an infant had been born to a minor mother and I represented that mother. It was Malina. She was now bloated from her recent pregnancy, but thrilled to be a new mother. She named her baby boy "Lawrence" (not his real name). Dad was a white boy Malina had come to know on the streets.

Malina was placed in a large facility for girls in the system. Social workers did not want to place baby Lawrence with Malina because she had been a runaway. But the facility had lockdown capabilities, so Malina and I managed to convince the court to give her a chance to care for her baby.

There might have been another reason that social workers did not want to place Lawrence with Malina. Lawrence was caucasian in appearance. With all the black and hispanic babies in the dependency system, healthy white babies were in huge demand by adoptive parents. When babies are removed from their parents, they are "fast-tracked" for adoption.

Malina took all the parenting classes at the facility and relished her role as mother. But, she was loud, opinionated, and lazy, at least according to the social workers reports. Staff had found dirty diapers stashed under Malina's bed. They found dirty bottles lying around her room and discovered Lawrence with a diaper rash. Lawrence was six months old when the social worker decided to place him with Dad, a 16 year old, and his step-mother. Dad was then found to be not appropriate as he might have been doing drugs and refused to submit to testing. So placement of Lawrence was now with the woman who married Dad's dad.

This destroyed Malina, but I convinced her to buck up and do whatever was necessary to get her baby back: take more classes, get good grades, do not argue with your social worker. Now, Malina liked to talk. And she was opinionated. No one wanted to monitor her visits with Lawrence; they had to take place at a social worker's office. Malina lost hope and she started going AWOL again. She was transferred from placement to placement. Now reunification seemed all but impossible.

I volunteered to monitor the visits every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. This truly was detrimental to my limited social life. First, I picked up Malina, then we went to Baby Lawrence's Dad's home (where Dad was not allowed to reside because of the unresolved drug issues). Along with Baby Lawrence, we picked up a car seat, stroller, and huge bag full of diapers and baby paraphernalia. We went to the mall. We walked around Old Town Pasadena. We went to lunch. In gasoline and lunch money alone, I was going broke.

But Malina loved taking care of her baby and Baby Lawrence was a happy, delightful little fellow, pink cheeked with straight brown bangs just like Moe from the Three Stooges. Malina taught him to drink from a sippy cup. She made sure we ordered vegetables so he could push them around his highchair tray. "I read that it's really good for babies to learn to feed themselves by allowing them to play with their food", she told me while wiping off rice that had become paste in Lawrence's sweaty little palms.

We became familiar with every ladies' room that had clean diaper changing facilities. Malina carefully applied medicated cream to Lawrence's raw bottom. "He has eczema and psoriasis.", she told me. "Look, they took him from me because he had a diaper rash. He still has a diaper rash. It's because has really sensitive skin."

In Dependency Court, parents do not get much time to reunify with their children. Time was flying and a hearing was set to determine if Malina had earned the right to be able to have Lawrence placed with her again. But Malina's placement would not allow babies, and many other facilities would not consider her because of her past runaway behavior. Dad's step-mother wanted to adopt Lawrence.

The court decided it was in Lawrence's best interests to have a permanent adoptive home rather than wait and see if a home could ever be found for Malina and Lawrence. Many times, if the baby's placement is with a relative, courts will allow the mother to live in that relative's home. If the relative will allow it. Dad's step-mom and Malina did not like each other.

I set the matter for trial. I estimated that the trial would take three hours. I would have mother and baby evaluated by court appointed experts. I didn't want her to give up. I don't know if she heard a word I said. I told her I would visit her over the weekend. But before week's end, I got another AWOL report. I never saw Malina again.

I don't know where she went or what happened to her. It still breaks my heart.