Burnt Lumpia

Tinola: Filipino Chicken Soup

As new parents, the wife and I have received some child-rearing tips from, oh, just about everyone we know. I'm not saying we're not appreciative of such tips, but some of these pointers have been downright unusual. Not surprisingly, the strangest pointers have come from my own mother:

• "Make sure you massage his head so it will stay round."
• "You should leave the lights on at night when he sleeps, so he gets used to it."

I know I'm new to this whole parenting thing, but I'm perfectly satisfied with the current roundness of my kid's head, and leaving the lights on at night just makes no sense to me. Ironically enough, I can rest a beer on my own head because it's so flat, and I'm nocturnal. Strange, that.

So despite my mother's good intentions (at least I think her intentions are good), I've pretty much ignored her "sage" advice. However, there was one nugget of knowledge that spilled from my mother's mouth that did kinda sorta make sense: "Tinola is good for increasing breast milk production."

"I can produce breast milk?" I asked my mom.

"Not you, your wife!" she corrected me.

I told you, I'm new to this.

Anyways, Tinola is a simple-to-make rustic Filipino chicken soup. Like the chicken soups of most other cultures, Tinola is also known for its healing and restorative powers--helping to recover from cold and flu symptoms--this much I knew. But I had never before heard that Tinola was also good for nursing and feeding newborns.

So I wasn't sure if my mother was just perpetuating some old Filipino wives' tale, or if Tinola indeed possessed any lactic magic (I'm very pleased with myself that I came up with that rhyme). But if cooking a pot of Tinola would make things easier for my wife, and indirectly get some Filipino food into my kid, I was all for it.

My Adidas

Chicken feet are gnarly-lookin' things aren't they? What with the pink-toned lizard skin and the talon-equipped toes and non-opposable "thumb".

Ick.

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the foot of a chicken is indeed quite creepy in appearance. And depending on how a particular chicken is raised, his or her feet will either spend a good amount of time standing in the chicken's own hot feces within a small confined cage (regular industrial, corn-fed, mass-marketed chicken), or hopefully running around out in the open on dirt, grass, and the hot feces of other farm animals (natural, cage-free, free-range, blah blah blah chicken).

Double ick.

Now, if you can get past the pink lizard look of chicken feet, and if you can get past the notion of where those feet could have possibly spent all their walking (or standing) hours, and if you are a bit of an adventurous cook, then you may find that chicken feet can actually be a wonderful ingredient to use in the kitchen.

Not only can chicken feet be used to make a wonderfully rich and gelatinous homemade chicken stock, but they can also be transformed into tasty bits of goodness on which to nibble.

Yes, nibble.

That's right. Chicken feet are delicious.

For instance, the menus of Chinese dim sum joints often offer fried/braised/steamed chicken feet under the moniker of "Phoenix Claws" (perhaps risen from the heap of unwanted chicken parts).

And in the Philippines, street food vendors can be found grilling marinated chicken feet that are playfully nicknamed "Adidas" (three toes = three stripes). Similarly, grilled chicken heads are referred to as "helmets," and pig ears are known as the ever-so-80's "Walkman". I'm not making this up.

Filipinos. Clever marketers of food we are.

Anyhoo, I'm sure there are many more cultures with a chicken foot fetish. But for most chicken foot recipes that I've found, you have to first boil the feet to tenderize and soften them up a bit. As such, I decided to kill two birds with one stone, er, uh, boil chicken feet for two separate recipes: Chicken Stock and Grilled Adidas.

What the Duck?!!

After concocting a batch of duck adobo confit a few weeks back, I've had quite the surplus of duck fat sitting idly in my fridge. In addition to the tub of duck fat that was still protecting my last two legs of confit from the harsh elements of the outside world, I had another tub of duckboob grease at my disposal as well.

As I mentioned in my confit post, I've used some of that fat to fry some garlic-fried rice. But for the last few weeks I've also used duck fat for sauteeing veggies, whipping up vinaigrettes, browning chicken, rubbin' on my elbows (I get ashy), and silencing squeaky door hinges (it's the WD-40 of the kitchen). It's been an absolute cluster-duck for me these past few weeks.

In fact, duck hasn't been this prevalent in my life since Webby Vanderquack and Doofus Drake chilled with me on weekday afternoons.

Ah, DuckTales. It's a classic.

Anyhoo, I decided to put a stop to all this here-and-there use of duck fat and put the magic grease to the test on a larger scale--I broke out the cast iron pan and was ready for some fryin'! Oooh-whoooo-hoooo!

Of course, the first thing that may come to mind when mentioning frying and duck fat is perhaps potatoes--as I'm sure duck fat fries are quite tasty.

But I had something else in mind--especially after doing some reconnaissance on Ilocano Empanadas during my recent trip to the Philippines.

Empanada vendor in Batac Ilocos Norte, Philippines.

Quack Pot

Throughout the ages, many cultures have adapted and created their own forms of food preservation. For instance:

• Filipinos use vinegar and salt (or soy) to preserve various meats in an Adobo.
• The French use fat and salt to preserve various meats in a Confit.
• The Galactic Empire used Carbonite to freeze various smugglers in suspended animation.

Although Darth Vader did not use carbonite in a culinary fashion, per se, I can only imagine how long a side of beef would last if frozen a la Han Solo. And since freezing things in carbonite does quite a number on my energy bill, I decided that it would be a more worthwhile, and tasty, endeavor to research the wonders of confit in conjunction with what I already know about Adobo.

Ah yes, an adobo/confit experiment! A fusion of Filipino and French food to yield a quacktastic pot of Duck Adobo Confit.

Party Fowl

When invited over to someone else's home for a barbecue, proper party etiquette usually dictates that you not point and laugh at the main dish as it is brought to the dinner table. That would be rude.

However, grilling a whole chicken with a beer can stuck betwixt its drumsticks not only yields a moist and flavorful bird, but it also merits a few chuckles when presented to the table. So by all means, do point and laugh if you are ever presented with beer-can chicken. But you should also be ready for a tasty treat once the bird is on your plate. And there are quite a few foods that combine both hilarity and deliciousness like beer-can chicken can. Just look at that picture above. It appears to be a nicely roasted and juicy chicken on a grill (delicious!), but then there's a beer can stuck up its arse (hilarious!). Sorry, but I'm easily amused.

Although vertically roasting a chicken with a half-full (hooray for optimism!) beer-can stuck where the sun don't shine is a common practice in many parts, there may still be some of you out there unaccustomed to such culinary delights. Let me first explain that the beer-can is more than just a novelty--it actually does help prevent the chicken from drying out by steaming the bird from the inside out, all the while perfuming it with beery goodness.  Grilling in this manner is also not limited to just beer-cans. You could also use fruit punch, colas, energy drinks, whoop-ass, and whatever else comes in a can these days.

Now I make beer-can chicken a few times a year, and I normally take to dispensing a dry rub of herbs and spices to flavor my bird. But this being a Filipino food blog and all, I figured I'd do a Filipino-style barbecue. And if there's one culinary tradition that Filipinos and Americans have in common, it's good barbecue.

Of course, Pinoys can lay claim to piggy goodness in things like Lechon, but we can also grill up a mean and tasty bird in the form of Chicken Inasal--chicken marinated in a heady mixture of vinegar and lemongrass and then thrown on the grill while being basted with red achuete oil.

Mmmmm. Beer-Can Chicken Inasal. It's the best of both worlds.

Filipino Pantry Chicken Caesar Salad

Imagine, if you will, a Chicken Caesar Salad.

Cool. Crisp. Creamy.

Chickeny.

A classic dish, some may say.

Behold!

A Chicken Caesar Salad!

It looks innocent enough doesn't it? But, that is no ordinary Chicken Caesar Salad.

Look closer.

Closer.

Closer still!!!

That is a salad that has traveled the space-time continuum. A salad, constructed from the unusual. A salad so familiar, yet... so... strange.

What's so strange about it you ask?

This salad was created from the following ingredients...

Behold!!!

Gasp!

Those things can't combine to create a classic chicken caesar salad can they?

Oh, yes they can. Yes they can!

Mwahahahahahaaaaa!

Ladies and Gentlemen. You've just crossed over into...

The Filipino Pantry Zone!

Arroz By Any Other Name

When spending Christmas at my parents' house, we adhere to quite a few traditions:

• My brothers and I challenge each other's manhood via video games.  This past year it was Guitar Hero.  I'll admit that my brothers are better than me at virtually rocking.  But I rock literally. So there.

• My dad challenges everyone's religioushood (I just made that word up) by not attending Midnight Mass. While my mother, my brothers, my wife and I attend church late Christmas Eve, my father stays home and practices his finger jabs and throat punches on a wooden dummy in the garage.  He then practices his striking with the business end of his belt, jangling the metal buckle like a jingle bell (he's festive like that).

• My mom challenges my wife's stomach-hood (again, another awesome made-up word) by telling her to eat more and more at the dinner table. Any Pinoy who has ever brought a non-Pinoy home knows what I mean:

Mom: "Why don't you eat?"
Wife: "I am eating."

5 minutes later...

Mom: "Are you OK? Why don't you eat some more?"
Wife with mouth full: "Um, yes. Ok, I'll have more pancit."

2 minutes, 39 seconds later...

Mom: "You're not eating! Have some more rice! Rice! Eat! Eat! Eaaaaaaat!"
Wife with gastrointestinal pain and no other choices: "Ummm. Uh. Yes. Please."

And so it goes at my parents' house on Christmas Eve.

As fun as all of that sounds, and it really is, there is one other tradition that I look the most forward to: Arroz Caldo.  And seeing as the theme for the latest Lasang Pinoy event is rice, I see no better entry than my mother's Arroz Caldo.

Chicken Adobo (Yes, Again)

As my thousands of two regular infrequent readers may recall, I have attempted to make Chicken Adobo before.  The results from that previous attempt?  Eh, I wasn't too pleased.  But I wasn't disheartened either.  In fact, after making that not too satisfying dish of Chicken Adobo, I vowed to keep trying different recipes until I found something I liked.

So while partaking in the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge almost two weeks ago (yes, I'm behind on my blogging, I know) I purchased a couple of pounds of chicken thighs not really knowing what I was going to do with them.  As I was pushing my cart around Henry's that day, I walked past a display of local organic  cider vinegar which triggered a flickering light bulb above my head.  As this light bulb buzzed and pulsated above my noggin, I bit my lip, cocked an eyebrow, and slowly started remembering something about chicken and vinegar.

Duh! Chicken Adobo!

After I had finally flipped the A-HA! switch, I knew I had seen a chicken adobo recipe specifically for chicken thighs in one of the many foodie mags I had back home.  I just had to figure out which magazine it was in.

Lazy Chicken Sotanghon

I have quite a few hand-written recipes that were given to me by my grandmother. Of course, I've only attempted to make a few of them.  Why just a few?  Well, most of my grandmother's recipes are intended to feed a small army.  And my household consists of only me and my wife.  No matter how hungry she and I get, a small army we are not.

Recently though, I was feeling ambitious and rifled through my accordian folder full of recipes (Nerd!) to find the instructions for my Grandma's Chicken Sotanghon.  After going over my Grandma's list of ingredients for this noodle dish, I was ready to give up and file the recipe away like I had many times before.  The recipe called for boiling one whole chicken and then picking the cooked chicken meat from the bones.  That's a lot of work. And I'm lazy.

But I realized something as I was stuffing my Grandma's hand-written, college-lined notebook paper back into my nerd-folder of food: I can't go on living my life like this can I?  I can't deprive myself of good Filipino food just because I am lazy.  I had to do something.  So I created a couple of shortcuts and reduced my Grandma's ingredient list to produce just enough food for me and my wife.

Spatchcocked Poultry

As I mentioned in my last post, spatchcocking refers to the removing of the backbone from poultry (in this case, Cornish Game Hens) so that it can be split for roasting or grilling.

I've only spatchcocked a couple of times, and it is a bit intimidating at first.  But to help me relax, I like to imagine Nigella Lawson whispering in my ear with her sweet British accent: "Would you like to spatchcock some birds with me, Darling?"  Ahem. Uh, on to the spatchcocking demo: