Bacon-wrapped Adobo spiced Chicken

This recipe actually started off as Chicken Legs stuffed with herbed rice, marinated in pomegranate. I neglected to leave enough time for marinating though, and I was going to the grocery store 2 hours before dinner. Oh well, save this for next week.  Since the chicken legs were thawed out, might as well search for something a bit easier. It's amazing, once you start surfing around, what you manage to find.  Lots of really cool ideas, that's what.

I started the surfing safari (a nod to the Beach Boys, whom my Evenko email notification told me are playing at the Bell Centre in Montreal in June) when I noticed bacon-wrapped. That's all it took to get me started on the journey. From there, I ended up reading about southern cooking, then on to Spain and Latin America.  Then the two merged, and I found this recipe.

Bacon-wrapped Adobo chicken legs with a colourful
medley of potatoes and onion. This is the 'before'
photo, the 'after' looks almost exactly the same.

Long side note: as I like to do when searching for recipes, I'll try to find 4 or 5 variations of the same dish and either pick the one that stands out, or merge my fav 2 or 3. It's amazing what crazy silly things some people do to perfectly good recipes. I actually saw one recipe that really looked promising, until it mentioned melting Velveeta cheese on each chicken piece. What The Face.  In any case, I've noticed a great many recipes on other food blogs seem to cut & paste almost verbatim from one of Allrecipes, Cooks, Epicurious, etc. I've seen the same mistake/typo from one place to another. I guess people don't like to surf much beyond the first page of google results.  I have nothing against those websites, I go to them a lot, I even have the "app" for two of them. Ah well. The cookbook isn't dead in any case.

One easy way I try to improve the taste of a recipe is with fresh ingredients. Duh.  But not always obvious. For the Adobo spices, popular in Spanish, Latin American, and Filipino cuisine, use fresh spices. I had some cumin seeds in the cupboard, so throw those in the spice grinder instead of using  ground cumin. Try to grind pepper, not shake it. Same for salt, unless you use Kosher or a flaky salt such as Maldon. For the oregano, get some fresh leaves and sprinkle. You have to adjust quantities since dry and fresh differ in potency, but the result is definitely noticeable. The general rule is 3 to 1 for fresh to dried, although the dried stuff loses potency as it gets old.

Next Time: I'd sprinkle the Adobo lightly on the chicken before wrapping, rather than after; would put more onion but in coarser pieces; I'd take some fat off the bacon and possibly some of the skin on the chicken; actually, I'd try chicken breasts or thighs

Me: 8/10
SO: 8.5/10
SSO: 5/10 (not much except chicken fingers gets more than a 5)

Bacon-wrapped Adobo spiced Chicken Legs

Ingredients

• Chicken Legs enough to feed your family, or otherwise however many you want
• Your favourite bacon, one slice per leg
• Potatoes, baby ones whole, or normal ones peeled and cut in large cubes, again however much you think you need
• Lots of onion cut in large pieces, probably 2 or 3 small, or one huge one
• Adobo seasoning (see below)

Method

• Season the legs with the dry part of the Adobo seasoning, and wrap with bacon. If you're concerned about fat, then trim bacon fat and chicken skin
• Lay them out in a baking dish (I love my "Pampered Chef" bakeware)
• Randomly dump the potatoes and onions over and around
• Sprinkle the garlic and oregano leaves (if using fresh)
• Bake until chicken is done, with an internal temp of 165 deg F. I used a 400 deg oven for an hour, but I started with legs that were not completely unthawed.

Adobo Seasoning (I started with Bobby Flay's, but lost the onion powder)

• 2 T kosher salt
• generous ground black pepper 
• 1 T cumin seeds (use spice grinder) or 1 tsp ground cumin 
• 1 tsp paprika 
• 2 tsp ground turmeric 
• garlic cloves to your taste, or 1 tsp dried
  
• generous finely chopped fresh oregano leaves, or 1 tsp dried

Mix all the dry stuff together. Separately, coarsely chop the oregano leaves and either smash the garlic cloves with the flat of a knife or mince.