I recently cooked one dish that I instantly liked. I enjoyed this dish so much that I even shared it on my Facebook wall, where it became an instant sensation not because it looked yummy but because they had a hard time believing that what I cooked can be called Afritada.
So in my defense, I'm calling the dish that I'll be featuring today as Afritada de Ahab:
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One of my Facebook friends called this kare-kareng afritada because the sauce made it look like kare-kare. Another one thought it was pochero. And I say they are wrong because this is not just an afritada. This is my own version of afritada. Wahahaha yes I found the perfect excuse.
I cooked my afritada by following the steps laid out by Filipino Recipes website. This website said that afritada is a Spanish inspired dish combining pork or chicken, potatoes, tomato sauce and spices.
I used Hunt's tomato sauce for Afritada de Ahab.
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I had potatoes, drumstick chicken, onions, garlic, pepper, patis (fish sauce), and vetsin (MSG). I also had a pechay because I vaguely remember a tomato sauce dish cooked by my Mom that has pechay.
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| Sliced potatoes and pechay. |
My ingredients are ready so it's time to cook!
The recipe said that I need some chicken broth so I boiled the chicken for 20 minutes.
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I made sure that the meat is fully cooked before I separate it from the broth. It is cooked if the meat comes off easily when peeled off from the bone using fork.
Next is I sautéed the sliced onions, sliced garlic and chicken for 5 minutes or when the meat is slightly brown.
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I then poured the broth and the tomato sauce and let it simmer for 5 minutes.
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I then added the sliced potatoes and let it simmer until it's cooked. Next to be thrown to the raging lava is the pechay. I let it simmer for 3 more minutes and then put patis (fish sauce), pepper and vetsin. I poured enough of those things until it suited the taste that I wanted.
The final product is Afritada de Ahab, as shown on the photo at the start of the post.
There's tomato sauce left after I cooked the Afritada de Ahab so I had to whip up another dish using it. The dish that I made using the tomato sauce is this:
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| Pork giniling in tomato sauce. |
I believe that these two dishes (excluding my pork adobo) are the best that I made so far. These dishes were easy to cook and doesn't demand a lot of effort. I'll cook more of these dishes and I will make sure to cook the real afritada next time.
