Cultural food anomolies

I have been catching up on my internet reading today, including reading comments on other people's blogs. Sometimes the comments are even more thought provoking than the original post.

What does this have to do with food? Well, as Eddie Willers often does, a post of his started my brain whirring. Then the comments sent it off into outerspace!

I like ethnic foods, I love pozole, tinga poblana, falafels, samosas, springrolls, gnochhi, all sorts of interesting foods. But some things weird me out, and the hot dog comment made me think of some of the foods here that I don't understand nor like very much.

What is with sandwichon? For my 50th birthday, (long ago kiddies, almost in the last century), Husband threw a surprise party. Actually,he gave money to Son and Son and the neighbor girls put it together. One of the delicacies was a sandwichon. I don't blame Son, he probably thought it was a giant submarine sandwich from Subway, instead it was a loaf of white bread sliced horizonally and filled with ummm, various, ummm, let's call them..... pates! and frosted with miracle whip or some equally vile substance. It was garnished with pimento and peas and looked delicious, infact it looked like a cake.

Sadly,Memories of a Cuban Kitchen, also includes a recipe for Cake de Bocadito or ribbon sandwich loaf, but at least it's frosted with cream cheese and mayonaise. I cannot be responsible for inflicting this attrocity upon ciberspace, so if you want the recipe, you'll have to buy the book, or at least check it out of your local library. The only defense I can offer is that Cuban cooking seems to be frozen in pre-Castro time, a ribbon sandwich cake would have been so modern and fashionable in the 1950s and 60s! What is Mexico's excuse?

And then there is the hot dog. I pretty much like hot dogs, in a bun with ketchup and onions. Inspite of having been a carhop at A&W and having survived many a twentyfive cent coney dog Tuesday, I still like chilli dogs. I even have a fondness for corn dogs, but deep fried hot dog flowers are not a treat for me and I will eat just about anything if you deep fry it. Speaking of treats,when we was in Panamà, we went to a bakery, in the section with the empanadas, choripàn! It didn´t look a choripàn, which is a sandwich made from (Spanish) chorizo and a small baguette but more like a bagel dog, that should have tipped me off. Imagine my surprise when I bit into it and it was contribed from half a hot dog and a very heavy bread dough. I ate it anyway, and felt like I had eaten a stone. sadly, all the emapandas had the same dough, more like a bread dough that had never risen than a pastry dough. Maybe choripàn is Panamanian for bagel dog? naw, bagel does taste better.

Back to cooking at home!

I missed our kitchen. Three weeks of eating out every day is too much. Panamà is into meat. I love tostones, or patacones as they are called in Panamà but I do like a little more variety in my veggies.
After being gone from home for such a long period of time I didn't think I would find anything at all in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator. Amazingly enough there were 2 apples and a head of napa cabbage still in good shape rolling around in the almost empty compartment. Husband walked across the street and bought a few other staples and I managed to make lunch without going to the supermarket. The Mayo Clinic Williams Sonoma Cookbook, has a recipe that combines cabbage, onion, carrot and apples with some dried cranberries to make a tasty dish called Carraway Cabbage and Cranberries. Try to say that 3 times fast.
I also made a vegetarian chilli and some fry bread and that was lunch! Except for the fry bread, lunch was pretty healthy, high in vitamins and fiber.
Since our mixer isn't fixed yet (the only authorized Kitchenaide repair shop is in Mexico City), I used the Cuisinart to knead the dough. Before this, I had only used it to make pastry. Oh, I use it to chop and do the food processing stuff too, but this was my first experience using it to knead dough. Pretty easy.
Fry bread is pretty basic, 1 cup warm water, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 tablespoon fat, the original recipe called for lard or shortening, I used butter. The leavening agent is 2 teaspoons baking powder. You roll out the dough, cut it into pieces and fry.
The best fry bread that I ever had was in Arizona at the Indian Powwow.
In Panamà, they make a version of fry bread that they call hojaldres, I found a Panamanian cookbook, so I will post the recipe for that bread tommorrow.

Slacking in Panama

Since we arrived in David we´ve been eating in fondas, the Panamanian version of a cocina economica and breakfasting in a cafeteria style restaurant where our breakfast is included in the price of our hotel room, it´s been interesting. The food is tasty, heavy on fried and lots of meat. I am not into french fries for breaking my fast but the smoked pork chop and side of papaya which I ate was pretty good. There were other choices including fish and fried chicken!
Every place where we´ve had breakfast from the beach to the city has offered bisteak, which means beef steak, but in reality is strips of beef sauteed with onions and bell peppers and served with a beef gravy, beats eggs any day, in my opinion.
Apparently Panamanian tortillas are more like sopes than the thin Mexican variety, they also serve holjaldra which is similar to Navajo fry bread.
I have been looking for a Panamanian cookbook, but no luck so far.
My only other culinary thing to report is that just like Cuba and Spain, omelets are also called tortillas here, tortillas de huevo.

Food in Panama

We have had Panamanian, Colombian and Italian food since we have been here. All of it good.

Panamanian is very simular to Cuban, we went to a restaurant called El Trapiche (the sugar mill) and shared a "Panama Platter", for starters a soup called Sanchocho,made with chicken and yame, a root like yucca. The platter had arroz con pollo, ropa vieja, patacones (tostones), fried yucca (cut like french fries) all very similar to the Cuban versions. They also gave us tamale in olla which was like tamale in casuela but made with masa harina instead of corn meal. One thing we really liked and the name escapes me unfortunately was a yucca fritter stuffed with ground beef. You boil yucca and mash it, make patty, fill it with seasoned ground beef, fold over the edges and fry it. It sounds like tortitas de papas rellenos or stuffed croquettes of mashed potatoes which we´ve had in Mèrida. The Columbian restaurant served papas rellenos as an appetizer which were delicious and similar to the stuffed yucca.To drink had lemonade sweetened with raspa, which is grated sugar cane, I highly recommend it.

Platanos!!

Yucatan Today has an article about bananas! You can read it here. The range and variety of bananas really is incredible. We eat the tabasco or rotan bananas almost every day. Since fruit ripens so very fast here, we usually only buy a small hand (bananas come in hands!) of bananas, but the tienda that our neighbor's have across the street almost always has bananas for sale.

I already blogged about my love for platanos machos when made into tostones. But you can also use them like you do potatoes, in stews. A favorite meal in our house is carne guisado con platanos. I have decided that guisado means "stewed", you see cocina economicas offering 3 guisos, which means 3 entrees, but things that are guisado seem to always have some sort of sauce in which they were simmered or stewed.

Another way we also like machos is baked with rum and sugar, yum.

Then there are the lovely little bananas, cute and delicious, there are ones whose skins look reddish and others that just look like mini-rotans.

I have 3 banana plants, they were free from the Palm nursery when I bought the Phoenix roebelini (pygmy date palm) , they are supposed to be 2 "regular" bananas and 1 macho, since it takes 18 to 24 months for bananas to bear fruit, it will be awhile before I find out. The high winds that we have been having have totally shredded the leaves, rendering them useless for cooking purposes (sigh). Oh, here is an online nursery that sells banana plants so you can get an idea of the diversity of the fruit.
Oh, I was surfing the net, reading cooking blogs and I found this recipe for Banana Stuffed French Toast, I had some left over rolls and of course some bananas, so I made it, I used more eggs since I had them. Since I was using rolls instead of a loaf of french bread, I also removed most of the crust which I then fed to the doves outside. We ate it with mermelada de naranja agrida, yum! so good!

Carne guisado con platanos

This recipe is from Memories of a Cuban Kitchen by Mary Urrutia Randelman and Joan Schwattz

1/2 cup olive oil
2 1/2 pounds (1 kilo) boneless chuck, cut into 2 inch chunks
1 large onion, thickly sliced
1 large green bell pepper, seeded and diced
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 to 6 medium-sized ripe tomatoes coarsely chopped (1 kilo of romas)
1 cup dry sherry (Jerez)
1 cup beef stock
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon paprika (the recipe recommends Spanish paprika, I just use the pimentòn dulce I have on hand)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds, crushed in a mortar
pinch of dried oregano
1 bay leaf
3 medium size plantains (platanos machos) of medium ripeness (yellow with black spots)
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley (perejil)

1. In a large, heavy-bottomed casserole, heat the oil over medium heat until fragrant, then brown the beef on all sides. Reduce the heat to low, add the onions, bell pepper, and garlic, and cook, stirring until the onions are lightly browned, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients except the plantains and parsley, cover and simmer 1 1/2 hours, stirring frequently. Add more stock if necessary. (I sometimes use my crock pot, draining the tomatoes first and using half as much liquid).
2. Cut the tips off the plantains, peel and slice 1 inch thick. Add them to the casserole and cook over low heat, until the plantains are tender, another 20 to 30 minutes. Transfer the stew to a serving bowl, sprinkle with parsley and serve hot.

Clean the fridge pita bread sandwiches

I admit that doesn't sound the least bit appetizing. We are going to be going to Panama on vacation and are leaving next week, so I have been trying not to buy much food. The eggplants at Mega looked really good though and were only $13.00 a kilo so I bought one, and 2 little zucchinis which were some cheap price like $6p/k. So what I did was fire up my grill. I have a cast iron grill that I bought, complete with the ridges so you get those nice sear marks.
A couple of weeks ago, I got the brilliant idea of making flavoured olive oil so I have a bottle of garlic flavoured olive oil, the criteria that I used for the oil was it had to be virgin and the bottle had to be attractive. I also made some rosemary flavored oil but I didn't use it this time. After tasting the garlic oil, I decided it wasn't quite garlicky enough, so I poured some in a custard cup (I use custard cups to hold small portions of ingredients, I thought about buying some cute little cups at Galaria made for that function, but really the custard cups are perfect and I can also use them when I make flan.) and added more chopped garlic.
I sliced the eggplant, zucchini, an onion, a green bell pepper and a yellow one. I brushed everything with the garlic oil and grilled them over high heat. Because I like the pattern made by the ridges, I turned the eggplants more often I strictly needed to, brushing them with more olive oil (eggplant will absorb all the olive oil you want to put on it).
After the vegetables were done I also grilled some pork cubes. Cubes of pork that had been marinating in sour orange, black pepper and salt, to cover, for about 4 hours. I drained the marinade and replaced it with olive oil and a handful (okay, 1/4 cup?) of fresh ground cumin. The pork marinaded in the olive oil while I grilled the vegetables.
I simply dumped the pork (I'm sure there is a more elegant way to say this) on the grill, and cooked until brown. After I removed the pork, I cooked the garlic that had been sitting in the olive oil. I deglazed the grill with about a half cup of white wine. I scraped up any brown bits and this "sauce" got poured over the pork.
Everyone got a pita bread that had been warmed and cut in half and made their own sandwiches.
Because of the quantity of olive oil (probably a cup in total), I don't think this was really healthy but it was tasty, and you can of course be more moderate.
I think the best pita bread available in Merida is from panaderia El Fenix just across from Office Depot on Calle 23.

You know you live in Mexico when....

1. The meat substitute contains meat. This is the Guten, that I used in the Ropa Vieja, the first ingredient is chicken and the second is beef.
2. Tortilla chips are in the bread aisle.
3. You can buy toast in the bread aisle, both wholewheat and white.
4. Papayas and mangoes are cheaper than apples and pears
5. There are 5 types of fresh chiles and 6 types of dried chiles for sale
6. You don't buy anything in a pre-pack because the fruit in the bottom is almost always rotten or moldy
7. There is a great deli selection and they give samples
8. You can not buy corn meal except at the special import store (Pescadeli).
9. Canned goods come in boxes rather than cans (I love this packaging!).
10. The pasta is imported from Italy and Argentina and is still inexpensive.
11. Pickles are an exotic ingredient.
12. Mayonnaise has lemon juice in it.
13. They replace the fat in milk with vegetable oil because it's healthier (???).

Old clothes and New Years

One of my comfort foods is Ropa Vieja (literally old clothes), it's meat that has been simmered so long it falls apart and then is stewed with tomato sauce and spices. You serve it it with rice. I have had variations of Ropa Vieja here, not bad, but not the Cuban kind. Another dish which is a family favorite is black beans and white rice, Moros y Cristianos, yum. Neither of these are pretty dishes, but really tasty. My daughter got my mom's recipe for ropa vieja when we went up to visit my parents last May, it's almost the same as the one I use. I also have a Cuban cookbook called Memories of a Cuban Kitchen by Mary Urrutia Randleman and Joan Schwarth which has a very similar recipe, I guess there are only so many ways to combine meat and tomato.
I found a product in the grocery store called Guten, carne y soya (Tu alternativa para preparar una comida completa) which is made from a mix of meat, wheat gluten and TVP so it isn't really a meat substitute, it comes in strips, shreds and chunks, so I bought the shredded (deshebrada) and used it in Ropa Vieja, not bad and certainly faster than simmering the meat and shredding it by hand. I recommend cooking the meat the night before and letting it sit in the refrigerator before shredding it.

1 kilo carne para deshebrar (flank steak works great)
2 bay leaves
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 large bell pepper, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
500 grams of pure de tomate (about 2 cups tomato sauce)
1/2 cup Jerez (cooking sherry)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup finely chopped, drained pimientos for garnish
1 small can of peas

• Place the beef and 1 bay leaf in a large saucepan, cover with salted water, cook over low heat, covered, until the meat is tender, about 2 hours. Let the meat cool in the stock (preferably overnight in the fridge), or at least until room temperature. Remove the meat from the stock (reserve the stock for another use), then shred the meat with your fingers or a fork.
• While the meat is cooling, heat a large skillet, add the oil, heat until it shimmers, then cook the onions,peppers and garlic until the vegetables are tender. (If the pan needs more oil, add a little water instead). Add the tomato pure, the Jerez, and the remaining bay leaf and cook uncovered an additional 15 minutes.
• Season the shredded meat with the salt and pepper and add it to the tomato mixture. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes. Remove the bay leaf, garnish with the pimientos and green peas.
• This dish improves with being prepared in advance and then reheated.
• serve with white rice