Rescuing an ill-fated adobo

MOST LOCAL food experts point to one reason Filipino dish just fail to break into the international cuisine radar screen.

Our food generally lacked color, they said.

Vangie, who happens to be one of the best food writers in the country, explained that to me bite-sized.

Adobo is plain brown. Dinuguan is all black. All dishes with coconut milk white or off-white. Sinigang looked just like stock or broth. Even sidewalk barbecue looked like burned meat.

They just don't have the prettiness of French dishes, or the blush of Vietnamese or Thai cuisine. Taste, ironically, is not the only factor when it comes to food. Maybe that's why presentation weighed heavily in Iron Chef decisions.

I thought about it after I tried to salvage a failed attempt to cook a dish my mother suggested – chicken-pork-squid adobo.

Just because I whipped a chicken-pork adobo which Maxi raved about, I thought that gave me all-access pass to adobo country.

Well the long arms of the law quickly caught me and deported me back to reality last week.

The main problem turned out to be the extra ingredient I tossed – rather carelessly – in what I believed to be tried and tested formula.

There was too much ink than I initially considered.

It spoiled the rich chicken-liver taste because even if the pork was tender and chicken peeled from its fibers, the murky black sauce just don't appeal to the palate of my little girls. Ewwww!

That was for lunch. And since I knew they won't be as nice when they saw the same disgusting thing by dinner, I did some major renovations. I poured all the sauce to the sink and then fried the grimy meat on fresh cooking oil.

And then I started adobo all over again.