There was a problem. On Zoom, Chef Kevin McGuire of Kawit! was expertly moving his audience from how he makes chicken adobo to how he makes tofu. The problem was that I, at home, in an attempt to keep up, had already used the tofu I was supposed to have only now started cooking.
Had I ruined the dish?
My possible mistake was part of “Eat Kawit!,” an event Wednesday night from the food programming of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas — running now through June 27 — in which the chef from Kawit! shepherded an audience of 20 through chicken and tofu adobo, two dishes McGuire’s mother taught him to make when in the Philippines. Kawit! first began making Filipino barbecue for New Haveners as a popup restaurant in 2019. This year it has opened up shop as a ghost kitchen through Whitneyville Cultural Commons and the Church of St. Paul and St. James, offering delivery through GrubHub. In the course of opening for business, McGuire and husband and business partner Seth Wallace also connected with Tim Cabral of Ordinary, who was on hand Wednesday night to pair McGuire’s dishes with three different cocktails.
Leo Slattery Photos
Those who signed up for the event in advance received an email explaining that we had two errands to do beforehand. First, we had to pick up our cocktail ingredients from Ordinary the day before. Second, we had to go grocery shopping, for chicken or tofu (or both if we wanted), rice, scallions, and a few specialty ingredients. In particular, McGuire asked us to find Filipino soy sauce and cane vinegar, an ingredient I had never heard of. This led my family and I to Hong Kong Market on Whitney Avenue. We got picky about our soy sauce, especially as the recipe called to us to use a cup of it, more than I’d ever used at one time in my life. More intriguing was the cane vinegar, in great abundance on Hong Kong Market’s shelves. We were ready to cook.
Looking over the recipe beforehand, I decided to chop my 10 cloves of garlic before the Zoom session began. I also started my rice cooking.
While I was at it, I figured I would cut up my tofu. I was ready to cook.
The meeting began with Cabral encouraging us to try his first cocktail, a mix of champagne and bitters that started off the evening right and opened the nose and taste buds for cooking. McGuire than explained how to measure rice “the Filipino way.” He first rinsed the rice in cold water and poured the water off. He then measured off twice the water to rice in the pot using his index finger and thumb. He set a timer for 15 minutes and let it simmer. I gazed at my rice cooker already bubbling away and felt prepared.
“Let’s get started with the adobo,” McGuire said, explaining that “it has all the flavor components of garlic, vinegar, and soy sauce,” among other ingredients, for a classic indigenous Filipino dish. But the recipe wasn’t foolproof. “The first time I made it, I made it so wrong,” he said. He’d made it from memory and had used far too much vinegar. So he went back to his mother for her recipe, followed that, and made the dish as he wanted it.
McGuire started by browning his chicken in a pan. Tofu was my protein, so i dutifully began browning it as well. I added garlic as McGuire instructed. He then added the soy sauce. I followed his lead. He explained that Filipino soy sauce tended to have a “clean salt and umami flavor.” I hoped my substitute was acceptable. It seemed to be; an equal measure of the cane vinegar followed it. Then came brown sugar, peppercorns, bay leaves, and coconut milk. It all was to be brought to a boil with four cups of water so as to make a reduction. The kitchen filled with a rich, delectable scent. I tasted the sauce. It was tangy and sweet, rich and peppery, reminiscent of other Asian dishes but unlike them all. I had never had Filipino adobo before, so I didn’t know if I had done it right. I did know that it was delicious.
As Cabral instructed us in the making of the second cocktail — a shrub with ginger beer — he asked a participant how the drinks were.
“They’re fabulous,” she said, “but I’m so far behind.” She explained that she hadn’t even started making her tofu yet.
McGuire reassured her that all was well. “I’m about to start the tofu adobo,” he said.
I froze. I had already used my tofu.
“Should I start over?” I said. I had another block of tofu in the fridge.
Steph, my wife, shook her head. “I think you should just make what you’re making,” she said. But what was I making? I watched helplessly as McGuire began making his tofu dish, beginning with frying garlic in a wok. I didn’t have time to chop all that garlic again. My preparation had made me cocky. Perhaps I had failed.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that McGuire used the same ingredients to make the tofu adobo as he had the chicken. The order had been slightly different, but they ended in more or less the same place. “Cane vinegar,” he explained, “has a slightly less acidic flavor and that why I like it. It’s easier to tame.” He also extolled the Hong Kong Market, which “always has everything I’ve been looking for. My cockiness restored, I indulged my love of coconut milk to add more to the adobo than McGuire had called for.
From there it was simply a question of letting the adobo continue to boil off and thicken a bit. McGuire and Cabral used it as an opportunity (as did I) to drink the second cocktail. They reminisced about working at former restaurant Caseus together, and to talk about Ordinary’s reopening with the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions.
“You may have heard that Covid doesn’t exist anymore,” Cabral joked. But he assured viewers that Ordinary was reopening cautiously. with regard for its customers’ safety.
“I had a cocktail there that changed my life,” a participant said.
“I hope you don’t mean ‘ruined,’” Cabral joked. The participant assured Cabral that he meant “transformed.”
The adobo reduced to a velvety liquid and McGuire declared it done.
“Do I get to eat a little of that?” Cabral said.
“Oh yes you do,” McGuire said. He then said something that reassured me further that, though I hadn’t followed his instructions precisely, and though I may have taken liberties with the coconut milk, perhaps I wasn’t far off the mark.
“Adobo is more of a technique than a recipe,” he said. It was an approach to making protein burst with flavor. “If anyone has never had it before, I’m glad this gets to be your first.” I was glad to be introduced to it. I garnished my dish with scallions. I saw McGuire and Cabral were eating theirs with a fork. I ate mine with a spoon to get as much of the sauce as possible.
Cabral then encouraged us to try the third and final cocktail, a variation on a pink squirrel, creamy, sweet and boozy.
“Is this our dessert?” a participant asked.
“I don’t see anything wrong with that,” Cabral said.
Kawit! is available for takeout or delivery. Ordinary is reopening soon. The International Festival of Arts and Ideas runs now through June 27; check its calendar for a full list of its offerings.
The Filipinos are coming! The Filipinos are coming! Filipino adobo, that is...then soon there will be Jolibee fried chicken in New Haven or CT, they've already landed in New Jersey and at the Port Authority bus station on 42nd and 8th Ave.
We usually have to go to war with someone or somewhere before we can be aware of their cuisine and then a slew of restaurants start "popping up" a few years or decades later. For example, WWII and the current sushi craze (but where are the German schnitzel and wurst fast food joints?), Korean War and Korean food craze, then Vietnam War and Pho everything...maybe Afghani-Iraqi cuisine in the future...but we were at war in the Philippines over 123 years ago. The Philippine-America War of 1898-1902. Ooops, we forgot that war. Just shuffled under the Spanish-American War of May-August 1898 that ended with a peace treaty with Spain on December 10, 1898, but fighting and troops dying in the Philippines until 1912 is just called an insurrection, still part of the Spanish-American War in the history books. Maybe something like January 6, 2021 is a day of tourist visits at the US Capitol.
Don't want to be too much of a history bummer trip, enjoy the adobo!!!