I love my husband for many reasons, not the least of which being his ability to make scrumptious adobo-- both chicken and pork. The ingredients are very simple, but flavorful in the extreme. when we first started dating he was worried that I wouldn't like one of his favorite dishes, but I love a great variety of foods from around the world so I was not worried. Now that we live in a city that has a great number of quality Asian food stores we are even able to get soy sauce that will make a Filipino cook smile.

INGREDIENTS:

Soy Sauce (any variety but Kikkoman-- Jim says that a friend of his mom's will use as many as 4 soy sauces blended together to get the taste she wants.)

Vinegar (here we used apple cider vinegar, but typically white will do.)

Star Anise

Garlic (approx. 1/2 clove)

Bay Leaves

Peppercorn

Chicken and/or Pork

Start with a huge pot. Place your meat in the pot and cover with equal parts vinegar and soy sauce. Approximately 1 cup of both will cover 3-5 pounds of meat. Place 3-4 bay leaves in the pot as well as the same number of star anise. Leave these whole and remove before eating (unless you don't mind biting either.) Finely chop 1/2 clove of garlic and sprinkle over the whole.

Jim's mom places the peppercorns in the adobo whole-- creating a peppery mineflied of flavor, but Jim uses our mortar and pestle to break up the corns and sprinkle them evenly over the pot.

Turn your stove on medium heat and boil the chicken till it falls apart. This photo is after we have already taken some of the choice peices out of the pot and devoured them.