Recipe | Laguna Afritada

Friday last week, I listed several easy recipes to follow, and as much as I need to put more veggies in the foods I eat, I still can't resist cooking chicken, so yesterday, I cooked chicken for lunch, using a recipe I got from FOOD Magazine - April 2011 issue.

Laguna Afritada

{makes 4 (500ml) containers}

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken, at least 1.5 kilos (or use leftover white adobo)*
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• half a head of native garlic, crushed
• 2 medium tomatoes, cubed
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 1 teaspoon patis (fish sauce)
• peppercorns
• 2 potatoes, cut into small wedges and fried
• 2 teaspoons evaporated milk
• 1 red bell pepper, deseeded then cut into strips
• 1 green bell pepper, deseeded then cut into strips

* If using fresh chicken - clean, cut into serving pieces and marinate overnight in salt, vinegar, and ground pepper. Cook as white adobo.

How to Cook:

• Drain adobo, but reserve the liquid.
• In a pot, heat oil then saute the garlic, tomatoes, and onion.
• Add the white adobo, patis, and peppercorns. Cover to seal flavors.
• Pour in the adobo liquid and let boil. Add the potatoes, then the milk.
• Let simmer then add the red and green bell peppers. Cook for about two minutes more.

We didn't have white adobo and I used fresh chicken for this recipe. The recipe required "a lot" of time - marinating the chicken overnight and maybe resting the adobo for some time, which I wasn't able to do. I marinated the chicken for about an hour only and I cooked this recipe right after cooking the adobo, but even if it lacked the time, the dish still turned out good. We were actually thinking how it will taste given the time it needed for the chicken to absorb all the flavors, so we will surely cook this again some other time.