This is a dish that nearly every Filipino, anywhere, be it at the homeland or any other country. They will have tasted and known this dish as it is often considered the national dish of the Philippines. So a Filipino cookbook without one is no Filipino cookbook at all.

When I was adopted at the age of 9, I had already been familiar with this dish. So when I arrived in the US I would often try Chicken Adobo if and when it was offered! And so I present this dish to our simbi community to enjoy as every Filipino as done through its history.

FACTS ABOUT THE PHILIPPINE'S CHICKEN ADOBO

Philippine Adobo (from Spanish adobar: "marinade," "sauce" or "seasoning") is a popular dish and cooking process in Philippine cuisine that involves meat, seafood, or vegetables marinated in vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic, which is browned in oil, and simmered in the marinade. It has sometimes been considered as the official national dish in the Philippines.

The cooking method is indigenous to the Philippines. Early Filipinos cooked their food normally by roasting, steaming or boiling methods. To keep it fresh longer, the food was often cooked by immersion in vinegar and salt. Thus, it is very likely that Filipinos could have been cooking meat in vinegar as a means of preservation. This process dates back to the Pre-Hispanic Period and was used for pork and chicken.

When the Spanish Empire colonized the Philippines in the late 16th century and early 17th century, they encountered this cooking process. It was first recorded in the dictionary Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala (1613) compiled by the Spanish Franciscan missionary Pedro de San Buenaventura. He referred to it as adobo de los naturales ("adobo of the native peoples"). Dishes prepared in this manner eventually came to be known by this name, with the original term for the dish now lost to history.