pork adobo

There’s something lovely about making new friends.

It’s not just that a physical presence has walked into the room, but she trails behind her a lifetime of music ringing in her ears, turns of phrases from her family that she thinks everyone says, bursts of intense passions that still stand for an entire year’s worth of feelings, and a whole long lists of likes and dislikes. It’s comforting when we find someone who likes what we do (”You read Mary Oliver poems? You like watching Christopher Guest films?”) and doesn’t like the things we try to avoid (”Ugh. Don’t even talk to me about football.”). When a new friend walks in, an entire life walks in too.

Recently, I’ve become friends with Tamiko. It happened in a particularly new social framework — Twitter. (We all have so many imaginary friends on Twitter. Some of them become real friends too.) She and I talked back and forth about teaching, our daughters, the weather. Mostly, though, about food.

It’s funny. If you meet someone through your church or work,  you may not know if that person has the same compulsion you do to dream fondly of breakfast upon first waking up. On Twitter, or through blogs, you can find people specifically because they are as focused on food as you are. (And let’s face it — a little obsessed.) I follow people on Twitter who are whooping it up at the Aspen Food and Wine Festival right now. I love the vicarious glimpses of another life, but it’s not mine. Tamiko and I talked about our families, putting dinner on the table, and foods we’d like to try if only we had the time.

So we met. We had a connection beyond Twitter, because she was teaching at the same university as my dad when we first started talking. When she walked in the door, with her two daughters (the 4-year-old wearing a paper tiara, the 1-year-old clutching a tennis ball), she walked into our lives easily. She’s cool.

A couple of weeks ago, Tamiko wrote about making adobo with her mother. She is half Japanese and half Filipino. As Tamiko wrote in her fledgling blog, she has tended to give more attention to her Japanese half, at least in a culinary sense, than her Filipina half.

“I know there are lots of societal and cultural reasons why Filipino food hasn’t caught on in the culinary American mainstream, the way sushi has. And as a picky-eater-turned-foodie (don’t laugh! I know I’m not the only one), I have to confess that I’m still learning to appreciate Filipino food, partly for my Filipina mom.”

So when she wrote about adobo, I knew I had to make some with her. “Adobo, however, is the national dish of the Philippines, and with good reason. It is chicken, or pork, or sometimes both, stewed in a sauce that’s a little sweet and very garlicky, peppery and vinegary.”

She was speaking my language.

I had no idea, however, that a dish that seemed so culturally foreign to me would be the easiest dinner ever. It’s literally a one-pot dinner, with 7 ingredients. That’s it. By combining these foods into one big pot, and walking away from it and let it become its own magic in the bubbling and simmering, you end up with something you will instantly make again and again.

We made the pork adobo, of course. You can see it up top. We used tamari sauce instead of soy sauce, for my sake. Other than that, it was the recipe as written by Tamiko.

(You’re going to have to go to her blog to get the recipe. I want more people to know her and her writing.)

About 30 minutes into the cooking process, I wandered out to the garden to cut us some herbs for another dish. When I came in, my face was swathed by the smell of peppery vinegary robust pork. It was intoxicating. I had to stop on the doorstep to let it all in.

Eating it was even better.

I’m awfully glad that Tamiko walked into my life.