DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

Today’s New York Times Dining & Wine section has a great article by Kim Severson titled Recipe Deal Breakers: When Step 2 is ‘Corral Pig’. She discusses the frustrations suffered by even the most adventurous and experienced cooks when they run into recipes with phrases such as “if you don’t have a helper,” or ingredients lists with impossible to obtain items like “wild boar from the hills surrounding Santa Fe.”

Usually, when a recipe seems convoluted and complicated, I simply plan ahead. I shop early, scouring shops all around town and ordering items online if necessary, and then I block out a day to spend uninterrupted in the kitchen. However, even my gung-ho-edness has its limits. While I have yet to encounter a recipe that requires me to corral a pig, I return time and again to my basic book of Nicaraguan cookery: 50 años en la cocina con doña Angélica, to read, for sheer entertainment’s sake, the recipe printed on page 58 of the 9th edition (published 2006): iguana en pinol. This plato típico (traditional dish) calls for one whole iguana, peeled. Just like that. Some recipes are indeed better left alone.

For your reading enjoyment, I have translated the recipe.

IGUANA EN PINOL

“This is a traditional Nicaraguan dish, product of the time-honored culinary creativity of Granada. As the iguana is a cold-blooded animal, the consumption of its meat is permitted on Wednesdays and/or Fridays during Lent, traditionally regarded as days of observance; besides, that season coincides with the oviparous reproductive period of that esteemed reptile, whose soft-shelled eggs are mostly yolk-filled, are considered by those in the know as true 'DELICATESSEN.'
Sensible were the first naturalists that classified it in giving the name “IGUANA DELICATISSIMA.”

2 C. corn
1 whole iguana, peeled
2 sour oranges
8 C. water, with salt
1 head of garlic, pounded
1 onion, sliced
1 tsp. whole peppercorns
3 large onions, chopped fine
2 C. lard
1 tsp. ground black pepper
sour orange juice
6 small onions, sliced thin
¼ C. lard

-A day ahead, lightly toast the corn, without letting it brown; mill it in the machine, leaving a bit coarse and store it.

-Early the following day, buy the iguana at the market with its corresponding ration of eggs; wash it well with the sour orange juice, cut it into small pieces and boil it in the salted water, along with the garlic cloves, the onion, and the peppercorns, until it’s soft; remove it from the fire, and strain it. Reserve the liquid.

-Measure out 4 C. of the corn you toasted and milled; add the reserved broth, and return it to the heat, stirring constantly until thick and well cooked. In a casserole that can be presented at the table, fry the (3) onions in the (2 C.) lard over moderate heat, until the are lightly golden; add the cooked corn, the ground pepper, and sour orange juice to taste; cook everything over low heat, taking care that it doesn’t dry out.
-Add the iguana and cook a bit longer.
-Fry the (6) sliced onions in ¼ C. lard and reserve both.
-Boil the eggs for 3 minutes in boiling water with chili and reserve, warm.
-Serve the iguana in the casserole/serving dish, and drizzle over it the onions and lard. Garnish with the eggs.

Serves 12.

CHINO LATINO

Chinese frijoles?!

I took Señor O to Gitlo’s last week, where he was properly inducted: we ordered daikon cakes and pork buns - reruns for me, but just as tasty as the first time - as well as chicken dumplings, crunchy taro spring rolls filled with pork, shrimp, and black mushrooms, and a second order of dumplings, because they were that good; soft purses stuffed with savory chicken and tender cabbage, gently sautéed to yield a slight crunchy exterior.

Too full to order any more food but eager to plow through the menu in its entirety, I settled on a drink: milk tea with boba. The tiny and swift-moving waitress Wendy explained boba was tapioca, and though this cat is not quite a fan, curiosity often overcomes it. The first thing that struck me was not the blueberry-looking orbs sitting at the bottom of the glass, but rather the electric blue, ultra-wide straw that was stuck in there. I could fit my pinky in it! Clearly, the straw was designed to comfortably suck up the boba balls – clever, clever. The milk tea was black tea with milk, sweetened and iced; refreshing, but less interesting than the boba. I started sipping, trying to control the suction as I was worried the boba would zoom up and dart to the back of my throat, like a hockey puck about to score. I held it in my mouth and finally bit down, and…it was utterly bland. I was perplexed. Why add an ingredient that does nothing to complement or enhance taste?

Gitlo shed some light. He said people get bored of drinking the same old thing all the time and that adding something like boba would add an element of fun. I remained perplexed; I drink eight glasses of water a day and though flavorless and odorless, it’s never occurred to me to plop tapioca in it. However, I will say this: upon reflection, I did fool around with the straw a bit. I was very tempted to use it as a boba shooter.

The reasoning behind boba’s inclusion in tea was likely lost in translation, nevertheless, further chatting revealed that Gitlo and I have some things in common which are happily interpreted in both Chino and Latino.

Red beans were in both of our native menus, but in surprising ways that were novel to each of us. Gitlo presented Señor O and I with a red bean cake. The beans were suspended in a lavender gelatin that had been sliced into 2-inch-thich slabs resembling custom soap or a slab of marble. The gelatin was actually water chestnut flour which once set is a firm edition of Jell-O. It was cool, lightly sweet, and very odd, my palate being accustomed to tasting beans exclusively in savory preparations. I pointed this out, explaining that my beans are boiled with garlic and salt and then either fried, mashed, mixed with rice, or served as soup. Gitlo has only ever cooked a bean for dessert.

We next had an animated and exclamation-studded discussion about nacatamales and their relatives in China. Regrettably, I can neither pronounce nor spell their name - my lame attempt at mimicry came out like saying “Joan” while sneezing. While the Nica breed is corn masa, pork, rice, potato, tomato, prunes, and a hunk of lard wrapped in a plantain leaf, Gitlo’s version contains sticky rice, peanuts, a variety of bean, sausage, Chinese five-spice powder, and bacon wrapped in bamboo leaves. Apparently, this buffet-in-a-bundle was once on the menu, but Gitlo’s ma wouldn’t listen to him when he said the hunk of fat in there would frighten the customers. I sympathized with his ma – when I was a kid I was horrified by the piece of jiggly lard in the nacatamal, but I learned better. If you mash the lard into the masa, it melts and infuses the whole thing with an inimitable porky flavor. The fat must stay. I’ve been promised a Chinese tamal next time I visit and am very excited at the prospect.

FRUSTRATED IN FLORIDA

A mere 24 hours after alighting in Boston I flew down to Florida to visit my mom and little brother. Adventurous bird that I am, I took the subway – err, “T,” as they call it here – to the airport. Paranoid about being late, I left super-early, only to arrive at my gate a mere hour after I left home. I was thus, super-duper early for my flight. And then, of course, it was delayed. Twice.

Finally, my plane landed just around midnight. It seems that down there in the Land of Disney not only Cinderella’s coach turns into a pumpkin at 12 o’clock, but the Turnpike, too. Finding the highway closed, we took the scenic route home. We drove past several pawnshops, the usual fast food joints, “gentlemen’s” clubs, more pawnshops, and then…a Nicaraguan fritanga and food shop. Was this a mirage? Had those eight hours at the airport addled my brain? No, my mother’s husband assured me, it was really there. In fact, we could go there when it was actually open.

That night I went to bed dreaming of what I would order: tajadas (fried plantains) and maduros (fried ripe plantains), fried cheese, chorizo, carne asada, cerdo adobado (seasoned and sautéed pork cubes) and ensaladita (a slaw of sorts, made with shredded cabbage and diced tomatoes moistened with vinegar)... These things are all easily made at home, but it was the novelty, the thrill of finding this quaint little spot in the hyper-commercialized strip that is the not-so-aptly-named Orange Blossom Trail was what was really fueling my appetite.

The field trip was pushed back to Sunday morning, because yours truly was forced to attend a few sessions with The Porcelain God. All notions I had of eating fried things were completely erased, but a ravaged stomach had not weakened my resolve to visit the fritanga.

It must be noted that the Fritanga Santa Bárbara is in the same lot as the Topp Clazz gas station, and that such a grand title (and spelling!) sent me into a rapture because it was just what you’d find on the side of the road in Nicaragua. Spirit soaring like a helium balloon, I skipped into Santa Bárbara only to be met with…blaring Mexican music. And ogling from the patrons.




The air slowly and steadily started leaving the balloon version of me. I tried to be casual about the staring men, but I could feel their heavy stares. I wanted to identify myself as a fellow Nicaraguan and almost yelped out “Soy nica!”, but decided they wouldn’t care because they were about as Nica as the Salvadoran cookies and Cuban sugarcane juice they had for sale there. It was a sham! Though I really wanted to take pictures because there were some interesting products from Central American countries that also exist in Nicaragua, like jarred jocotes (the label called these plums, but I think they’re more akin to olives) and nancites (yellow cherries? I think not! These little yellow fruits are stinky, like dirty belly buttons!) but I decided against pulling out the camera because I was worried there would be trouble.

Now, to be fair, I Googled Fritanga Santa Bárbara and found one or two reviews; it seems that the regulars find the atmosphere welcoming and the food appetizing. Unfortunately, I was met with a less than warm welcome and the food I spied behind a glass case was not what I’m used to. There were canned mixed vegetables in some dreadful red sauce! So my apologies to the proprietors of Santa Bárbara, but, this is my blog and I am going to tell it like it is.

HHF

P.S.
There is a great fritanga in Miami (three locations!), Fritanga Monimbó (www.fritanga.com), that I eat at every time I’m in town that is wonderful. The people are friendly, the food is delicious, and they sell my favorite soda, Milca -- so bright red and sugary that I'm positive Willy Wonka invented it.

FORBIDDEN FRUITS

There are certain fruits back home that are not easy to come by in the US, even in the southernmost extremes of its geography. Some, such as nancite, a cranberry-sized fruit of bright yellow skin and white interior with a gaping belly button that exudes a heady and nauseating stench, I am happy to be safely away from, but others like sapote and níspero I crave. Sapote is rather like an avocado in shape and flesh texture. The exterior of the footballesque fruit is brown an rough, but the inside is buttery, smooth, and rich terracotta orange in color. A glossy black seed is tightly wedged into the velvety flesh. Sapote is for the persevering only, as it will frequently be filled with wriggling white maggots or be ripe to the point of fizzy fermentation. Should you chance on a perfect one, though, you will be rewarded. Decadent, it coats the palate and tongue with buttercream texture and aromas of exotic dark chocolate and mellow spices.


Níspero skin is also dull brown and coarse, and while its interior is not as rich and smooth as sapote, it does share with it unusual flavors. Níspero is grainy and fibrous, like a cat’s tongue. Redolent of chocolate and moss, it smells of earth dampened by rain, moistened cedar, and secret hiding places.


Other fruits, like guayaba and jocote were not yet in season, and so I was able only to have the former in jelly form and the latter in preserved from. Many of you are probably familiar with guava paste or guava and cream cheese pastries as the flavor combination is rather popular. I never tire of the taste, perhaps because like Proust’s madeleine, it reminds me of childhood. My mother and I used to have “tea time,” whose fare always consisted of toast spread with butter and jalea de guayaba and topped with a slice of cheese.


Jocotes bring to mind olives with great big pits. During semana santa (Holy Week) they are available everywhere, their bare-branched mother trees decorated with clusters of the sour green fruits. My grandfather has a farm in Granada and during semana santa huge basketfuls of mangoes and jocotes would be brought from there and lined up down the corridor. I would eat one after the other, wincing as the too sour ones wore down the enamel on my teeth and sucking greedily on the ripe red ones that were a prize to find buried in the multitude. Jocotes en miel are the preserved variation and it is all I could get in early February. If March jocotes recall the hot months, these honeyed bites are bits of waning summer.

T IS FOR TORTILLA

Aside from telling you that I am – or was, until very recently - a culinary student I have told you very little about myself. Here’s a biographical tidbit: I am from Nicaragua, and more specifially, the small colonial city of Granada, “La Gran Sultana”. I grew up here and there, and have lived in the U.S. for the past ten years, but roots remain planted at approximately 12° 10' N 86° 15' W.

One of the things I hope to do someday is a thorough research project on the food of my country: why do we eat what we eat? What is really native to us? Who taught us to cook? So many questions about what we consume and why that I would like to answer.

I visited last week, and although ten days is but a brief sojourn, I tried to eat as much as possible. Most of the time my stomach was filled to capacity, but in the interest of scientific investigation, I chewed bravely on. This is merely a brief overview of my native cuisine, but I hope to add more information, as well as recipes, in the not too distant future.

Rice and small red kidney beans are on the menu three times a day. For breakfast, they are mixed and fried together to make gallopinto (literal translation spotted or painted rooster, alluding most likely to the reddish tint that roosters have which resembles the final product). Gallopinto is often accompanied by eggs, either revueltos (scrambled) or as they say in my grandmother’s house, perdidos (lost) or fried, as well as by tortillas or bread. You could also go the full monty and have fried plantains or maduros (sweet, ripe plantains) and cheese, either fresh or fried.


Gallopinto and tortilla


Cuajada and queso fresco, two traditional fresh milk cheeses.


At lunch and dinner, the rice and beans will be presented separately at the table, but there they always are. Growing up, meals served at home were of an international variety, but regardless of what we were having, rice and beans would be at the table. My mother and I always fought against two starches on the same plate, for example, if we were having lasagna there was no way we were going to have R&B there as well, but my younger brothers waved all propriety aside and would have them at the end of the meal, as “dessert”, they’d exclaim.

Corn products are as many can guess, a staple, tortillas being the most evident example. Most people buy theirs from vendors selling from humble roadside shacks. At under $1.00 for 10 tortillas, they are one of the more affordable food items available in a country that is among the poorest in the world.



A tasty local treat is quesillo: Quesillo is string cheese that bears a striking resemblance to mozzarella. A braid of it is wrapped in a tortilla, smothered with sour cream (our version being much more liquid than the US variety) and a slaw of pickled onions. The taco-like roll is placed in a slender plastic bag, and voilà, you’re ready to eat. The best part of the plastic bag is that you can tie it, cut off the bottom end, and finish eating your quesillo from that side, the better to enjoy the sour cream and pickled onions that have pooled at the bottom.




Corn is also the basis for a number of tamales: tamal pizque, of a greyish green hue that comes from the ash that’s incorporated with the corn; the sweeter and more tender yoltamal (which I unfortunateley couldn’t get while in Nicaragua); and nacatamal, the mothere of all tamales: weighing in at at least two pounds, this huge tamal cotains corn masa, pork, potatoes, rice, tomatoes, prunes, and raisins. It is a delicious and incredibly filling meal.



Tamal pizque.

The mister’s grandmother treated us to one of my favorite things; chicharrón con yuca. Pork cracklings are paired with steamed yuca and topped with a slaw of cabbage, tomatoes, white vinegar, and tiny, spicy congo chiles, which are the only chilies we use and never in great quantities. If bought at a stand at the market or a park, chicharrón con yuca will be served on a chagüite, or plantain tree, leaf.





We were also treated to fried plantain chips, grilled meat kabobs, and my favorite, maduros en gloria (sweet plantains in glory, literally, but figuratively meaning that they’ve died and have gone to heaven): the sweet plantains are fried, then smothered with cream and cheese and baked for a bit in the oven. Really, you must try it. You can find the sweet plantains at your local market (*do NOT buy green ones and expect them to ripen. Buy the yellow ones and wait for them to ripen further, until the skins are black as this will ensure they are tender, rich, and perfectly sweet). There is a recipe from a traditional Nicaraguan cookbook, 50 años en la cocina, by Angélica de Vivas, that I will try at home with American ingredients and post on the site as soon as I can.





Maduros en gloria

More soon,

HH&F