Cooking With Baby: Chicken Adobo

So, as some of you may know, I really enjoy cooking. When I had Mae, however, my cooking experience changed dramatically. There are days that I am not free to "slave" over the stove or "babysit" my cooking dish. Therefore, I have begun devising ways of cooking good meals for Daniel and me with Mae around. Often, I carry her in her sling, being careful to avoid splashes of hot food. This works out well most of the time. Now that she is bigger, she is able to play on the floor by herself for a lot of the time. She sits on the kitchen floor and chews on a wooden spoon or crawls around. So, I am going to begin to post my memorable "Cooking With Baby" moments. Let this be an encouragement to all the busy people out there that YOU CAN do it. You can cook good food even when you're busy. :-)

Chicken Adobo

I got this recipe (basically) from http://www.foodnetwork.com/ . Giada deLaurentis made it on her show, and I thought it sounded relatively simple. It is a Filipino dish, which is interesting since she's Italian. Sounded good....

Good things about this dish:

*Once the marinade is together, you can leave the chicken alone in there for an hour or two-- no babysitting...well, other than turning it over once.

*Once the chicken is in the pot simmering, you can leave it alone for 20 minutes at a time. No babysitting!!

Bad-ish things about this dish:

*I used chicken thighs with bone in and skin on. This created marvelous flavorful chicken, but also added some additional fat to the broth it cooked in, and afterwards the chicken skin was a little unappetizing. Next time I will either a) remove the skin prior to cooking, b) sear the chicken after marinating but before cooking to create a crispier skin, c) use a less fatty cut of chicken, d) after cooking, put the chicken under a broiler to crisp up skin.

*This recipe calls for a CUP of soy sauce! It tastes really nice, but that seems like a lot of salt and a lot of soy sauce to use.

The Recipe:

Ingredients:

I used 6 chicken thighs with skin on and bones in. Giada's origial recipe called for 12 drumsticks.

Marinade:

1 cup Vinegar

1 cup Soy Sauce

1 tsp. Crushed Red Pepper

1 cup Brown Sugar

2 Bay Leaves

How I deviated:

I used--

1 cup Apple Cider Vinegar

1 cup Soy Sauce

1 tsp. Crushed Red Pepper

1 cup White Sugar

2 Tbs. Molasses

1 tsp. Italian seasoning

Sauce:

2 cups Chicken Broth

2 Tbs. Arrowroot

2 Tbs. Lime Juice

Salt

Pepper

My deviation:

2 cups Beef Broth (That's all I had.)

2 Tbs. Flour

2 Tbs. Lemon Juice

Salt

Instructions:

Combine marinade ingredients in a bowl. Whisk together until sugar and molasses are dissolved and distributed. Place chicken pieces in a 9x14 pan and cover with marinade. Let marinate for 1-2 hrs., turning over once.

Place chicken in soup pot. Cover with marinade and add broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and allow to simmer for about an hour, turning chicken over every 20 minutes.

Remove cooked chicken from pot. Add flour, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to the broth and whisk rapidly until slightly thickened.

Serve chicken with the sauce on top and as a dipping sauce.

I served this with homemade mini cornbread muffins and lightly salted broccoli. It was a hit!! :-)