Read, Cook, Eat, Love
/Book Review: The Ultimate Filipino Adobo: Stories through the Ages by Claude Tayag with Michaela Fenix and Ige Ramos (Manila: The Foreign Language Institute, 2022).
The Ultimate Filipino Adobo: Stories through the Ages by Claude Tayag with Michaela Fenix and Ige Ramos - is a masterpiece compilation of adobo stories from the Philippines and around the world. (photo provided by Claude Tayag)
The Ultimate Filipino Adobo: Stories through the Ages is about adobo, with recipes told in stories and essays by culinary authorities, chefs, cookbook authors, food writers, bloggers, artists, scientists, and just about everyone in the Philippines and around the world who love the country’s unofficial national dish.
This compendium was created by the dream team of Philippine cookbook publishing: chef, artist, restaurateur Claude Tayag; book designer, food historian and chef Guillermo “Ige” Ramos; and prolific cookbook author and food writer Michaela Fenix. Behind the scenes, the team had the full support of the book’s publisher, the Foreign Service Institute, headed by Ambassador Jose Maria A. Cariño, Director General.
The dream team of Philippine cookbook publishing who created The Ultimate Filipino Adobo : Author and Chef Claude Tayag, Cookbook Author Michaela Fenix, and Creative Director Guillermo "Ige" Ramos Jr.
The coffee-table book, measuring 9 x 9 inches, has 200 pages, divided into six chapters, tracing the chronological origins of adobo, identifies nearly every ingredient that can be “adobo-ized,” and showcases the countries and cities where the entree is prominently cooked and served.
Full color photographs of varying adobo dishes – from different meats, seafood and vegetables -- are abundant from start to finish. Filipino food personalities from around the world fill the pages with their family anecdotes about adobo that come straight from their hearts.
In the introduction, Claude discloses that most of the essays are from his 18-column adobo series previously published in The Philippine Star, a national newspaper. He was compelled to write these stories in defense of the adobo, to calm the strong objections of Filipinos over a standardized recipe proposed by the Department of Trade and Industry.
But Claude realized he was on to something: The quest for who makes the best adobo. A question which has eluded so many, and which this book hopes to uncover.
What is the Filipino adobo? Tayag defines it “as primarily a cooking technique using vinegar as its main source of liquid, versus the Spanish adobo definition, which is to marinate in order to preserve meats and seafood.”
The vinegary adobo of Yasmin Tayag's dad. (Photo from The Ultimate Filipino Adobo)
In this adobo book, the recipes, ingredients, methods and memories are in story-telling form, the way our lolas, mothers, aunts and relatives taught us how to cook adobo. The photographs and images give an idea of what to expect once the dish is cooked.
Can you cook with this book? Definitely.
This is the adobo book that inspires. It jumpstarts the memory of your family’s kitchen, the cauldron of adobo bubbling, its garlic-vinegar aromas floating through the house. It brings back memories of one’s mother ladling the glistening chicken and jiggly pork cubes in a bandejado (serving dish). The book stirs that long-ago image of yaya (nanny) bringing the platter to your table, as the potent scent grips your senses. “Mainit-init pa (It’s still warm),” she probably said.
Adobo Mangga by Keesa Ocampo, Vice President of the Filipino Food Movement, California (Photo from The Ultimate Filipino Adobo)
It rekindles your love for the thick, golden-colored sauce that you long to pour on a bed of steamed rice on your plate.
But ultimately, who makes the best adobo? And how many adobo versions are there, one wonders?
“To say that there are 7,640 recipes of our adobo is an understatement. There are as many kinds of adobo as there are households,” says Tayag.
Food historian Felice Prudente Sta. Maria gives her blessings to this book in the Afterword: “Interpretations for the Filipino Adobo will continue wherever Filipinos settle, work and win friends.”
Personally, as a wife and mother who cooks adobo weekly for my family here in America, I can only agree with the authors. Adobo is our bat signal. Mention adobo to any Filipino in the diaspora, and their eyes light up. Right there we know we have found a kindred soul, a kababayan.
No matter how divisive the topic of who cooks the best adobo can be, one thing is certain, it is adobo that unites us, after all.
“Adobo is the link that connects generations through food like an unbroken chain,” says Tayag.
Claude’s mission in this book is straightforward: “To those who read this book, I hope that the Filipino adobo is not merely a recipe or a dish, but a memory ingrained in our hearts and palate.
This is what the Ultimate Filipino Adobo book will do for you.
As to which is the best adobo in the world?
It’s the one simmering in your kitchen right now, in all its garlicky glory.
*The Ultimate Filipino Adobo: Stories through the Ages by Claude Tayag with Ige Ramos and Michaela Fenix – Now available in the Philippines via Lazada and Shopee. In the USA, the book will be sold at Seafood City by April 2023.
Elizabeth Ann Quirino, is an award-winning journalist, food writer, and cookbook author. Her next book is Every Ounce of Courage, a memoir. Find her on TheQuirinoKitchen.com
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