RECIPE: Ala Ala Grilled Chicken Adobo Marinade
Filipino Chef Arvin Clemente talks Adobo
Words: Susie Davidson Powell
Photo: Nick Furnia/Ala Ala
Chef: Arvin Clemente, chef at Familiar Creature, Saratoga | Co-creator of Ala Ala
IG: @arvin.468
Chef Arvin recently joined the kitchen at Familiar Creature, the new Phila Street sibling of Hamlet & Ghost, after leaving Hattie's in Albany where he was chef de cuisine. He is also one half of the Filipino-American pop up, Ala Ala. Check out the full Ala Ala interview here.
The dish: “I guess, first and foremost, adobo is the national dish of the Philippines so it’s unique to the country, while lumpia is also popular but spring rolls can be found in other countries. Adobo was a really common dish that my mom or grandma would cook – same with Filipino spaghetti - but each person does a different spin on it. My mom and grandma add potatoes to it which I think is unusual, but my favorite thing is that they always add a boiled egg. Makes a lot of sense to me now – like in how ramen and a soy-marinated egg correlate. The longer the egg sits in the adobo stew it becomes a whole different thing. The adobo itself is relative to what our pop up Ala Ala was doing with a focus on strong flavors. Adobo has such a strong flavor you can’t see yourself eating it without rice to balance it out.
The inspiration: My mom and grandma never write anything down. My mom makes a dish called kaldereta which I love - (it’s a beef stew with a kick) - but I call my mom to ask for recipes and she tells me and then when I make it she corrects me so I’m like, “these are the quantities you told me!” But that’s because they cook how they feel. So this particular adobo recipe is something that Nick and I worked through. I actually ran it for a while as a special at Unified Beer Works too so it has been tested and had positive feedback. It’s also what we used for our pop up at Farmacy with garlic rice and the adobo glaze. You see the marinade has to be cooked differently than adobo stew because chicken adobo is normally such a big thing to make – it’s for large groups, family style. So the way I wrote the recipe here is more of a marinade to be grilled. It has all the same ingredients of what chicken adobo as a stew would have but in that preparation there’s a different process: You’d normally saute the garlic first and then saute the chicken and then add the vinegar to simmer and you just leave it and don’t touch it. You know, for us, pork adobo is just as big as chicken adobo so I have used this same marinade with pork belly too. Just marinate the pork belly for 30 to 40 minutes...
There is one funny thing about the “bouquet garni” in cheesecloth in the recipe: Western people can’t handle black peppercorns! They fear them! [Laughs.] As a Filipino, we just know they’re in there so avoid them but Western people bite down on a black peppercorn and freak out. So when I would sous vide with the adobo sauce and there were black pepperscorns everywhere I’d have to pick them out. That’s why I put the cheesecloth in the recipe… Oh, and you’ll see in the photo we did grilled chicken thigh with garlic fried rice instead of plain rice. It’s really good.”
RECIPE:
Serves 6
Ingredients:
Boneless Chicken Thighs w/ Skin on 5 lbs
Whole Black Peppercorns 2T
Garlic Cloves (Smashed w/ knife) 20 pc
Soy Sauce 3/4C
Cane Vinegar (Datu Puti) 3/4C
White Balsamic Vinegar 1/4C
Water 1/2C
Bay Leaf 12pc
Procedure:
Toast the peppercorns lightly on a dry saute pan. Light crush on a mortar and pestle and set aside.
Combine the cane vinegar, white balsamic vinegar , soy sauce, and water. Add the liquid mixture to a sauce pot
Create a “Bouquet Garni” utilizing a cheese cloth and butchers twine with the bay leaf, garlic and the toasted crushed peppercorns. Add the bouquet to the sauce pot.
Bring the sauce pot to a light simmer for 5 minutes. After bringing it to a simmer, allow the marinade to cool down to room temp.
Combine the chicken and the marinade. Allow it to marinade for a minimum of 16 hours but no longer than 32 hours.
Recommended to grill using binchotan coals as we have during our RnD Sessions.