Fancy calling myself Filipino and yet I can’t even cook what is supposed to be the Philippines’ national dish: adobo.

The one dish that keeps coming up when I ask my patients what their favourite Filo food is as soon as they find out I’m Filo and they then start talking about how they have a lot of Filo friends and how those Filo friends love to bring food for everyone at work and one thing leads to another and the conversation ends up with adobo.

And I’m there like, What exactly is adobo?

Because I’m pretty sure I’ve tasted it at parties somewhere in all my years of Filipino gatherings. But at the same time, I feel like there’s so many versions of it that I don’t even know which is which anymore. And if it’s chicken, then chances are I might have skipped it amongst all the other dishes laid out on the table especially if there’s lechon because I focus mainly on the lechon and nothing else.

And rice, of course. Because, duh.

So when I learned that the Australian-Filipino Community Services was hosting a cooking workshop featuring chicken adobo, lumpia, and pancit, I grabbed my chance. Sure, the event was for 25 years old and under but I had Raven as my excuse. So while she learned how to wrap spring rolls with the other Tinikling kids, there I was learning how to cook adobo the way people up in Luzon do it: with soy sauce and vinegar, but NO sugar!

The Bisaya in me died a little bit inside. Dont judge, but we put a bit of sugar in most of our food to balance out the saltiness in our ancestral blood.

We like ’em sweet and savoury. Just like us.

So, yeah. While I now know how to cook chicken adobo, I also know that I prefer to add sugar in mine. It just tastes better, I reckon. I mean, it’s a personal choice. The Chef reckons the no sugar version we prepared was very good. But I tried the other team’s yes sugar version and that was definitely more to my liking!

The Bisaya in me approved.

*Raven at 10 years old