Cookaholics Bulletin Board

In the Philippines, charcoal roasting is extremely popular. Lechon Manok, or charcoal roasted chicken stands dot every burg and ville on the 7000 islands here. And I love it, made with lemon grass and cooked on a spit over hot charcoal. Wonderful stuff. But recently I saw a rerun of Food Safari, an Australian food program that features international dishes that have found their way to the land down under. Portuguese Charcoal Chicken was the main course and it looked fantastic. The chicken was flattened, much like a spatchcock, but without removing the backbone. They simply cut through the breast. Seasoned, put in a "cage" and rotated over glowing embers.

So we took a stab at it. I found the recipe for the chicken and the Piri Piri Sauce recipe on the SBS website (Here), but a bit more research turned up half a dozen different variations that diverged quite a bit. We did a blend, primarily of the SBS version, but adding some red pepper flakes and using a bit of brandy in the Piri Piri Sauce instead of the marinade. We also brined our birds in a light salt and sugar brine. We added a bit of Bay Leaf Powder and some Achiote Powder. The original recipe called for Paprika, but sadly my pantry was empty, which is why we turned to the Achiote Powder, though its only commonality with Paprika is the color.

Regardless of all my fidgeting, substitutions and additions, the birds turned out pretty good, but not quite salty enough, since we backed all the salt out of the marinade and sauce due to the brine. We erred a tad on the safe side. Lacking a rotisserie, we used our baby Weber and simply turned the bird often. Very often. It finished nice and juicy, even through Weber could only do one bird at a time, so the first bird was put in a 200 degree oven to wait for its companion.

Ingredient List, Effort Number One:

Birdseye Chili 8 each diced
Lemon Juice 2 lemons
Garlic 2 cloves minced
Red Pepper Flakes 1 TBSP
Bay Leaf Powder 1 TBSP
Garlic Powder 2 TBSP to thicken the sauce (we ended up adding a third tablespoon)
Butter 2 TBSP
Olive Oil ¼ Cup
Pepper, Black 1 tsp ground
Vinegar, Red Wine 2 ounces (50 ml)
Brandy 2 ounces (50 ml) Whiskey was used in the show
Achiote Powder 1 TBSP

No heat was used in the TV show but another website talked about cooking the mixture, so we did that with the ingredients: oil, butter, diced chili, and garlic to help bring out the flavors and infuse them in the oils.

The whole thing was put in the blender and pulsed to a fine froth. We marinated the birds in the sauce for 1 hour and basted them every 10 to 15 minutes of cooking.

We will try this again, with another variation of the sauce, probably much simpler such as David Leite's version: Piri Piri Sauce

Interestingly even though the dish is called Portuguese Charcoal Chicken, it comes originally from a Portuguese African Colony, probably Angola. The Portuguese colonizers brought fiery red peppers from South America to their African colonies, and they caught on with the African cooks. Those folks developed the flattened chicken cooked on a rotisserie over a fire and basted with a very spicy sauce. The Portuguese noticed loved it and brought it back home to the Iberian peninsula. A couple of decades ago, immigrants to Australia introduced it there. Now we are taking a stab at it in the Philippines.

Steve

Many thanks for this. It looks easy enough for my simple brain and tasty enough that my failing faculties will pick it up!

We did this again last night, using a separate marinade and simpler Piri Piri sauce similar to the one found on the Food Safari website, though we substituted rum for the brandy this time and added a couple of more ingredients "enhancing" it with a bit of achiote powder and paprika for taste, texture and appearance. The family said it was an improvement compared to our first attempt.

I'm using the Piri Piri recipe as a springboard but looking to please Filipino taste buds (as well as my own). Achiote is fairly common here Luzon and very common in Visayan (central Philippines) cooking. Piri Piri sauce, if I understand threads I've read about it else where, is pretty hot. I have backed that heat down a bit but still make a nod to it by using both the local birdseye chilis and some imported red pepper flakes. If I had hot Hungarian paprika, I'd be going there too, but all I can lay my hands on is the milder stuff.

My wife liked this most recent attempt but feels there is still "something" missing, some flavor note. Departing from the traditional form found in Portugal (and Australia) we are going to try a few experiments with varying ingredients, starting with a small dollop of either plain white or the local muscovado sugar. Should those fail, we will move on to Chinese Five Spice and see how that works. What I'd give for a couple of hours perusing Amy's copy of the Flavor Bible.

We are trying to create a charcoal chicken that is slightly adventurous for Filipino taste buds but with some reassuring flavors as well, for her friends and classmates. Something that cooks over charcoal quickly but stays nicely moist in the process. We are closing in on it.

I have a nice thick pork chop or two we slathered with last night's sauce and then vacuum packed and cooked in a slow cooker to try for my lunch. A much slower process but I want to play with the cook now, reheat later idea and the Piri Piri sauce is purportedly good on pork.

Steve

Late Addition: Tried the pork chop today, a nice thick cut (1 or 1 1/4 inch) pork chop. Brined, then coated with spicy Piri Piri suace, vacuum packed and submerged in a slow cooker, sort of ghetto sous vide. While Douglas Baldwin recommends a lower temperature, we went with the high setting (approx 195F) and cooked for 1 1/2 hours (this is the Philippines after all, there is no FDA to speak of). It was cooked through but still fairly most and superbly spicy. Refrigerated overnight, we reheated and grilled it for a couple of minutes on the stove top. Just excellent. My wife refused to let me have the second one. Drat! My new fav for pork chops.

Both the chicken and chops sound good. I am going to try both. I need to get one of those flat rotissere grids for my grill.

Laurie

Laurie, I think you'll really like the pork chops. Our approach is to brine the chops, then marinate, finally vacuum packing them, liberally coated with our version of piri piri sauce (thickened with garlic powder and includes achoite powder and paprika) and then cooking in a slow cooker filled with water, preferably set on low (in the 145F-155F rang) though we have done it on high too. We use Baldwin's table as a guide for cooking times (found here). Note that I overcook based on my family's preferences. Trying to get them to eat even a sightly pink bit of pork is an exercise in futility, frustration, and failure. So it not only has to be cooked through and through, it has to LOOK cooked too.

I have an old CI pdf file on brining which specifies both salt and sugar, originally specifying 1/4 cup of table salt (more if you are using kosher salt) and 1/2 cup of sugar per quart of water for a basic brine. I don't use so much sugar, however, doing either a 1:1 salt to sugar ratio or a 2:1 salt to sugar ratio, depending on how much is left in the sugar jar for coffee in the morning.

We lust after a nice rotisserie basket and some sort of motorized rotating mechanism ourselves. For the moment, we simply cook on the baby Weber, turning quite frequently. There is one block of "lechon manok" shops, lechon manok being the ubiquitous Filipino charcoal roasted chicken on a rotisserie, near the big park in downtown Baguio City. I noticed that some of those shops are flattening their birds while roasting, but not actually butterflying or spatchcocking them. They do have wonderfully Rube Goldberg arrangements with pulleys, chains, and gears for turning four or more spits at once so they can cook up to a dozen birds at a go. One of these days my culinary brother-in-law may give them a bit of competition!

Steve

We did the pork chops again tonight and were they moist and succulent, not a term I use for Filipino pork chops often. The current version of Piri-Piri sauce is more on the order of the African version, fairly hot, well above my "for general consumption" standard. I would describe it as on the low end of volcanic, a zone that I only occasionally prefer and that my wife seems to be developing a taste for.

But the brine, marinate, vacuum pack and cook in 150F water for 1 1/2 hours sure is turning out a seriously improved entree for the household. Not sure how long the Piri-Piri is good for in the refrigerator, but I'm tempted to scale the quantity up and make it by the quart ... err ... liter.

Steve A.

Given the difficulty of getting things mechanical, why not work up a basket on a spit that gets rotated by a dog on a treadmill? There are plenty of illustrations available! And I bet an appropriate dog wouldn't be that hard to find.

Heh, beckyH, dogs are not hard to find here, but if you saw them you'd be aghast. And then there is the adobo which is really ah-dog-bo. SE Asian thing. They can be pets, they can be yard guards, or they can be a source of protein. The hamster wheel, hmm, dunno. Luckily, I've got a nice new source of shipping from the States. Not cheap, but handy, so I can get myself worked up into a frenzy and do my best to wipe out Amazon and eBay now without overflowing my friend's mailbox and patience.

Walking past the lechon manok stalls (roasted charcoal chicken on a spit) there are some wonderfully Rube Goldberg arrangements to keep their 8 or more spits rotating. And I would not be all so amazed to find, beneath the table, a chihuahua working it's little derriere off to keep those spits turning.

Jamie Oliver was just on The Today Show demonstrating his chicken with piri piri sauce. I love Jamie...he's so damn entertaining! Cute too...

Amy

Did someone say Jamie? He has a new show in the UK where he travels around the country exploring British food (actually about half the UK cooking shows do this). He is crumpet and a half, that one.

Mary