My First Successful Attempt at Afritada

I'm all better now and with that comes the eagerness to cook new dishes again. Chicken afritada might be a no-brainer for most people but I find it hard to cook a good dish of afritada. After countless attempts I end up with too dry, burnt or too salty versions so I just gave up until I found this recipe from pinoycook.

This recipe uses red wine so it piqued my interest even more. After consulting a friend about wines, I chose Merlot and cooked my first afritada after so many years. As always, I didn't follow the recipe per se.

Here goes. Fry the chicken pieces until brown. Add garlic, onions and laurel leaves. Mix until the onions are cooked. Pour some red wine and let the mixture boil then reduce the heat and allow it to slow boil until the liquid is reduced into half. At this point the chicken will turn purple!

Add the chopped tomatoes and dried oregano. Season with salt and pepper according to taste. Also add some sugar to control the acidity of the tomatoes and the wine. Allow the tomatoes to soften until most liquify into a sauce. Lastly, add the carrots, potatoes and in my case, frankfurters. The original recipe called for chorizo but I don't like chorizo so I settled with the leftover frankfurters in the freezer.

Cook for 15-30 minutes more, on low heat, so that the flavors will have time to permeate into the chicken and vegetables. I served this immediately with rice and some buttered haricot verts.

It was marvelous! I will definitely cook this again. The leftovers went to Monday's lunch box and it tasted even more delicious!