Chicken Asado

On our recent trip to The Philippines, we spent a week visiting Patrick’s family. As everyone knows, nothing tastes better than your mother’s cooking! We were treated to homemade sinigang, adobo, caldareta and Mommy’s famous Chicken Asado. This recipe is our attempt to replicate the experience of eating your mother’s home cooking, but with modern plating. If you’ve never tried Filipino cuisine, this is a great place to begin. It’s an easy but tasty dish with no challenging ingredients. Let us know if you enjoy it!

This recipe serves 6 people. Serve with rice.

Ingredients:

100ml soy sauce
juice of ½ a lemon
6 whole chicken legs (Marylands)
2 medium potatoes
1 large carrot
Canola or vegetable oil, for frying
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
85g liver spread or chicken paté
300g tomato passata
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 cup water
2 bay leaves
3 green chillies, whole
salt to taste
parsley and sorrel leaves, to garnish

Method:

For the marinade, combine soy sauce and lemon juice in a large bowl and add the chicken legs. Rub the marinade all over the chicken, then cover and refrigerate for at least one hour, or overnight.
Cut half of the carrot into matchstick shaped batons approximately 3cm by ½cm. Slice the remaining carrot and the potatoes into ½cm thick slices. Using a 4cm cookie cutter, cut the sliced vegetables into rounds. Then, using a 2.5cm cookie cutter, punch a hole through the middle of the carrot circles, to create a carrot ring and a smaller circle.
In a pan, heat the oil and then shallow fry the potato and carrot until tender and brown. Remove from the pan and set aside.
Remove the chicken from the marinade, reserving the liquid. Fry the chicken in the same pan, browning both sides but not cooking all the way through. Remove and set aside. Once the chicken cools a little, french the bone by cutting through the meat around the bone 1 inch from the base of the leg. Remove the skin and flesh by pulling it from the bone. Clean the bone by scraping away any remaining meat with a knife.
Add the onions and garlic to the pan and sauté until slightly brown, then add the liver spread or paté and continue to sauté until this has browned as well.
Add the tomato passata, brown sugar, pepper, water and marinade. Mix together and add the chicken pieces back to the pan. Simmer over a low heat for 15 minutes, or until the sauce is thick. Add the bay leaves and chillies and continue to simmer for another 5 minutes.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Remove the chicken from the sauce and set aside. Strain the sauce through a fine metal sieve into a large bowl, and use a stick blender to emulsify the sauce. Wipe out the pan and return the sauce, then return the pan to a medium heat, reducing the sauce until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.

To Serve:

Swirl 3 tablespoons of sauce in a circular pattern across each plate. Place a chicken leg on one side of the plate, and pour another tablespoon of sauce on top of the chicken. On the opposite side of the plate, arrange the potato and carrot circles and batons according to your preference. Finely chop some of the parsley and use it to garnish the chicken leg. Decorate the plate with some sorrel and parsley leaves. Sarap!

Traditional Asado

If you’re curious to try a more traditional Asado, or just can’t be bothered with fancy plating, simply change a few steps above.

At Step 2, slice all of the potatoes and carrots into 1/2 cm thick slices.

At Step 4, there’s no need to french the bone.

At the end of Step 8, return the chicken, potatoes and carrot to the pan, stir well and serve immediately with rice.