The secret ingredient is love❣️

Lately, I have been fond of cooking. I really don’t have any clue but I have been waking up early to prepare the food for the day even on weekdays. Truth be told, getting me out of bed early on a weekdays is really surprising, because of all the things I love and really best at, it is sleeping. I always snooze my alarm to the very last minute and still manage to be at work on time.

It is the usual working monday and I woke up determined to prepare this menu, Lechon Manok and Menudo.

Lechon Manok, is a filipino dish, roasted whole chicken over charcoals. It can also be cooked in an oven like what I did. Preparing this dish, brought me back tomy childhood days. I grew up with my uncle and they are really good at cooking. I remembered every time they are cooking, my stomach would always be happily satisfied after each meal. One of my uncle is really good at preparing lechons be it pork or chicken. He always tell me then that when you marinade the chicken, you should always put lemon grass to add flavor and good smell while cooking it. While preparing it, I tried to recall everything he taught me.

the marinade

• Rub the garlic cloves and ginger to the skin of chicken.
• Pour the soy sauce on the chicken and then the squeezed calamansi or lemon.
• Rub the black pepper around the chicken as well.
• Stuff the crushed garlic, sliced onion, lemon grass, and spring onions inside the chicken.
• For me, I had it marinade overnight and placed it in the refrigerator.

Instructions:

1. Remove the chicken in the fridge an hour before roasting.
2. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius.
3. Place the chicken in the rotisserie skewer. Make sure when you insert the skewer, the weight of the chicken is equally distributed. (Special thanks to my friend who gave me this electric oven with rotisserie function.)
4. Tie the legs together with a cooking string. For me, what I did, I used toothpick to tuck in the legs and wings to its body and to close the openings so that the stuffings will not fall off.
5. Cook your chicken for 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours.
6. Remove the chicken in the oven and skewers. Place it in a serving plate.

While the chicken is in the oven, I started with my menudo. I will not share the recipe and instruction since it is one of the famous dish and recipes are already available online.

Menudo, is one of my favorite dish when I was small. I remembered my mom used atsuete and she mentioned it adds color to the dish but nowadays, she used the tomato sauce and sometimes there already a menudo mix you can buy in the groceries. Thanks to mama sita. For me, I prefer using tomato sauce, salt, pepper and sugar to taste.

Here’s a short clip of the food I prepared.