The Dish I Wish I Learned Sooner

Learning Adobo Over Long Distance

Southeast AsianChicken adobo5 min read

Eleven time zones, one pot, and a grandmother shouting 'don't stir yet!' over a bad connection — how I finally learned the dish I'd eaten a thousand times.

I had eaten my Lola's adobo approximately one thousand times before I ever once watched her make it. That's the trap of the everyday dish: it's so reliably there that learning it feels unnecessary, like learning how the sun comes up. Then I moved eleven time zones away, and the sun stopped coming up.

The homesickness got specific around month three. Not for the Philippines in general — for the smell of vinegar and bay hitting a hot pot, which used to mean I was twenty minutes from being fed. I tried recipes online. They were all correct, and all wrong. Twelve authors agreed on soy, vinegar, garlic, bay. None of them were my Lola.

So began the video calls. Sunday evening for me, Monday morning for her — she'd prop the phone against the rice cooker and cook at me. The first lesson ended in disaster because I asked for measurements. 'How much vinegar?' 'Enough.' 'Enough how, Lola?' 'You will smell it. The sharp goes away.' I did not smell it. I stirred too early — the one sin adobo does not forgive — and ate something that tasted like salad dressing with regrets.

'How much vinegar, Lola?' 'Enough.' 'Enough HOW?' 'You will smell it.' And the worst part is — she was right.

But here's what nobody tells you about learning by long distance: the failure is the curriculum. Pot after pot, call after call, I started to understand what she was actually teaching. Not amounts — thresholds. The garlic is ready when it's the color of her kitchen cabinets. The vinegar has 'cooked out' when the steam stops biting your eyes. You don't time adobo. You supervise it, like a promising but unreliable nephew.

The pot that finally worked, she couldn't even see properly — the camera had fogged. She judged it by the sound of the simmer and my description of the sauce, then delivered the verdict she reserves for actual achievements: 'Okay. Not bad.' From my Lola, 'not bad' is a knighthood.

I have it written down now, our version, with her thresholds instead of measurements — including 'brand of soy sauce: the one with the yellow cap, do not experiment.' The document is three pages long. The dish takes four ingredients. Every line of the difference is her.