bbq

the spread: bbq, red rice, fiinadene!

it is a very warm winter in northern california. while the midwest and east coast are in a frozen tundra, we are walking around in open-toe shoes much too early! so i immediately think of barbecue season when warm weather hits.

when locals speak of "barbecue" , this confuses many white people.  unlike "american" bbq that is smoked, smothered, and grilled with barbecue sauce - filipino and chamorro barbecue is actually just marinated and grilled.  it is a very low maintenance approach to enjoying meat.  the ritual is usually to marinate meat for hours, then unwind and grill until it's time to eat and beyond. when calling people over for barbecue, it is implied that you are going to hang out around that grill.  the nice part about this marinade is that you can use any meat and marinate it for as long as you want. barbecue is most especially "special" when served with red rice and finadene.  it is the staple of every party. there are no measurements to this recipe because you can add or reduce to your liking!

RECIPE

Soy sauce

Sliced onions

Lemons

Vinegar

Beer

and now the kicker: if you want to make "filipino" barbecue, simply add banana ketchup (or brown sugar and ketchup) and maggi seasoning (found at the filipino grocery - a small bottle of "maggic seasoning" is like some proprietary soy sauce with a filipino twist (probably garlic and calamansi).  us filipinos like our barbecue on the sweet side. i think we are just "white-washed" in that sense. a lot of popular filipino dishes you'll find incorporate western ingredients such as ketchup, hot dogs, and peanut butter! Filipinos also perfected the quintessential meat-on-a-stick (chicken-on-a-stick) method. use marinated cubed chicken or pork and skewer onto a stick for grilling (no veggies, just meat!) . for any filipino variation, reserve the marinade for basting while grilling.

and just because i used to obsess over the barbecue variations back home, i loved eating at proa or jamaican grill when i was living in guam. as blasphemous as it sounds, for knock-off versions: i add cumin and red wine for a proa version and cinnamon, nutmeg, all-spice for that jamaican grill twist!