At the Pollo… Pollocabana.

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Headchef

The hottest place north of Havana...

Just because you never worked at an ~~overrated~~ Cuban restaurant for a couple of years doesn’t mean you can’t be taught how to make Cuban food yourself. The fact that you don’t have to unlearn many of the dirty shortcuts you would have been taught means you have a slight advantage over me.

In the years since I worked at ~~redacted~~, I’ve had to research the more traditional techniques and flavors that Cuban cooking requires. It’s not that it’s particularly difficult or challenging; it’s just my restaurant experience left me with the false impression that Cuban cuisine could come entirely off the back of a Sysco truck and still be considered tasty and authentic.

Most of South Minneapolis still suffers from this misconception. (burn)

Real Cuban food, made with fresh ingredients and attention to detail, is delicious, filling and usually cheaper to prepare for large groups of people than a lot of other cuisines. One of the cornerstones of Cuban food is pork roasted in garlic and lime juice.

Since I’m a reasonably observant Jew, I don’t eat pork anymore, but I still use the same technique for turkey and chicken that I would for pork. The result is equally delicious, moist and versatile as the original, without all that nasty swine.

If you dare question the authenticity of cooking poultry in this style, please note that Jews have been in Cuba since at least 1493, and have been cooking chicken and turkey in this manner for almost as long.

So below I have your chicken recipe; plus some notes on the required sides to this dish (black beans, rice, mojo criollo, fried yuca) and more.

You’re going to need the following:

For the Poultry:

Either: 3 Chicken Breasts (split into 6) or 2 large Turkey Breasts (split into 4). Both must have skin & ribs intact.
1 head of Garlic, peeled and chopped
2 cups Lime Juice (preferably fresh, but if not, use the bottled Key Lime juice)
1 1/2 cups Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 tablespoon dried Oregano
2 Bay leaves, crumbled
1 teaspoon Ground Cumin
2 teaspoons kosher salt

For the Mojo Criollo:

8 cloves garlic, crushed or finely chopped.
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup sour orange juice or 1/4 cup sweet orange juice and 1/4 cup lime juice.
1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil (preferably Spanish)
1 teaspoon salt.

Preheat your oven to 375°

Rinse and pat dry your chicken breasts. Arrange them in a deep roasting pan so that they aren’t overlapping too much.

Sprinkle with salt and cumin.

Pour your lime juice into the pan. Then sprinkle the garlic, oregano and bay leaf evenly over the surface of the chicken.

Carefully pour the olive oil all over the chicken making sure the garlic/herb mixture gets a decent coat of it. Tightly cover the pan with foil and roast in the 375° oven for 1 & 1/2 hours.

You’ve pretty much got the hardest part out of the way; so consider some sides…

Black Beans:

Make one package of dry black beans according to instructions. When fully cooked; do the following:

Saute 1 medium onion, 1 green pepper (preferably a Cubanelle) and 6 cloves of garlic in 1/2 cup olive oil.
When fully sweated add 1/2 teaspoon of oregano and 1 crushed bay leaf
Stir that around a bit more, then add the mixture to your cooked beans with 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar and 1 tablespoon bouillon seasoning*.
Heat the seasoned beans back up slowly, and they’re ready to serve.
Serve with medium grain white rice.

*The bouillon is optional if you have a complex about MSG, but at this point in history it’s pretty authentic.

Okay; if it’s been an hour and a half; check on your chicken. Pull the foil off that bad boy and baste the surface of the chicken with some of the cooking liquid. Turn the heat up to 400°. Put it back in the oven for another 45 minutes to an hour.

Meanwhile…

You should let all your mojo ingredients sit out at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. Right before you’re ready to serve; heat the 1/2 cup of olive oil on medium-high in a medium sauce pan. When it gets very hot (but not smoking) throw in the other mojo ingredients and stir quickly with a wooden spoon (watch out for splattering).

That’s it. You’ve made mojo. Now when you serve your Cuban food you can dump that stuff on all your sides. As a challenge to you the reader; I’m only going to list them until you DEMAND FROM ME THE RECIPES! The meal just won’t be complete without:

Boiled or Fried Yuca (cassava)
Twice-fried Plantains (tostones)
Collard Greens
A simple salad of Avocado, Grapefruit and Red Onion

All of these should get a healthy dose of mojo, but if you take the cowards way out and opt not to make them, you can always dump that mojo on your chicken…. Which should be ready by now.

This is about what your chicken should look like when it’s done. There are two schools of thought on what to do next; and either one will work depending on your immediate purposes:

Let the chicken cool for just a few minutes then shred it with a pair of meat forks until it’s all a big mess of shredded chicken and saucy goodness. You can pick out the bigger bones; but expect that your diners will do some of that work themselves. This is the technique you want to employ if you’re serving it up on a platter with rice and beans. OR…
Let the chicken cool for an hour; then pull it apart by hand (wear some rubber gloves for this part, please) taking extra special care to remove all the little rib bones. This technique is perfect if you’re going to use the chicken in tamales, empanadas or sandwiches.

With all that rice, beans and chicken; you’ll probably be full for a couple of days. But unless you’re feeding a squad of partisan guerrillas, you’ll probably have some chicken left over.

In addition to begging me for the secrets of yuca and plantain (one’s easy, the other is potentially toxic if you make it wrong) if you want to make the best use of your leftover chicken; you’re just going to have to come back to Reducer and learn how to make one of these bad boys:

Oh yes we did...

The Mystery of “Creole” Stew

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Headchef

French? Portuguese? Senegalese? Brazilian?

A Dark And Soupy Night…

During my last year of high school; I lived with my aunt and uncle in a second-ring suburb of Minneapolis. Through a series of bizarre events they managed to collect an assortment of teenagers from around the world that year, and among them was a girl from the West-African nation of Senegal. One night she prepared a soup for us so amazing that it has remained tattooed into my memory for the 15 years since I first tasted it.

It was a simple, nameless (as far as I knew) fish stew; golden-red stock studded with tender pieces of whitefish and peeled potatoes. Served with buttered baguettes and possibly a sprinkle of parsley, it was a revelation for me. So much flavor and depth; the way it soaked into the french bread; the notes of chili; the briny ocean-taste of the fish.

I hardly remember anything I ate as a teenager, but I have an easier time remembering that fish soup than the name of the first girl I made out with in high school. Honestly; I suspect that soup had a greater influence on me than old whatshername ever did.

Life happened, and I ended up leaving my aunt and uncle’s guardianship before I could graduate high school, let alone get the soup recipe.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the intervening 15 years reverse-engineering the soup on my own . I managed to create a couple reasonable interpretations through trial and error, but once wikipedia came along and I had the means to research the cuisine of Senegal I found myself plunging down a rabbit-hole of arcane soup knowledge that I couldn’t have fathomed before.

Let me show you how deep the soup bowl goes...

The first thing I discovered was that Senegal has a lot of fish stews.

Too many in fact.

Look up Senegalese cuisine on the internets, and about two-thirds of the published recipes seem to describe: “Fish simmered with tomatoes, peppers and spices in a broth served with rice or french bread”

It’s only the wikipedia page on the subject that gave me something resembling a clue; a mention of a bouillabaisse-like soup which is listed as Thiou. Frustratingly, when I clicked on the link it took me to a page on a river which runs through France, but nothing about the elusive stew.

Pictured: Not Soup

The Bouillabaisse thing was a good clue, to an extant. I had tasted and cooked plenty of Bouillabaisse before the onset of my shellfish allergy, and it certainly shared a couple of traits with the Senegalese soup in terms of appearance, technique and flavor. Plus- Senegal was French colony at one point, so the idea of a stew made famous by French sailors being adapted with West-African ingredients made sense.

Except for one problem: the soup could be found far outside of the former French empire.

Pictured: Not Bouillibasse

About five years ago I read a recipe for a Brazillian fish stew called Moqueca that sounded great. The common thread among the many variations was fish, tomatoes and peppers, sometimes with coconut milk added depending on the region. When I ended up making the soup I added cassava, green plantain, sweet, purple & white potato, for the starch, as well as ginger and saffron- both of which gave it a more Afro-Brazilian flavor than is found in the common recipe.

Despite the above additions and the presence of monkfish, prawns, half-cobs of sweet corn and linguiça sausage- this proto-Brazilian stew ended up tasting more like the Senegalese soup of my youth than any previous attempt.

Why was that? The connection between West-Africa and the descendants of slaves in the Brazilian state of Bahia (where my moqueca variation came from) made plenty of sense, but the tomato, onion and pepper base common between the two soups was decidedly European.

As it turns out; the French weren’t the only Europeans who attempted to stake a claim in what is now Senegal. The Portuguese had been there when they were dominating the slave trade, and while their language and culture failed to remain, a fish soup called Caldeirada seems to have left an impression.

The ingredients? Fish, tomatoes, onions, peppers and potatoes- oftentimes with saffron and ginger.

To be fair, there are other variations on this soup from other parts of the world. The Greek Kakavia, the San Franciscan Cipopino, the Catalan Suquet de Peix and the Italian Cacciucco all echo Bouillibasse, Caldeirada and Moqueca- with the differences stemming largely from what’s available to the cooks making them.

This brings me to my recipe (finally!).

It’s not Senegalese, Brazilian, Portuguese or French- and yet it’s a little bit of all of these. I call it “Creole” stew (quotes emphasized), but Meta-Creole stew is a little more accurate. The strength of this recipe is in how well it adapts to improvisation. You can follow it exactly how I write it, or you can sub out certain ingredients to make it more European, South American or African.

It’s up to you. Let me know in the comments how you make it your own.

Meta-Creole Stew

You’re going to need the following:

1/2 pound each: Sea Bass, Cod & Grouper, cut into large chunks
2 Red/2 Green Peppers (preferably Cubanelle peppers)
1 Sweet Potato, peeled and cut into large chunks
1/2 lb of Carrots, washed (not peeled!) and sliced into 2″ chunks.
2 large Baking Potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters
2 large Yellow Onions, quartered
1/2 cup Shallots, chopped
1 tablespoon Fresh Ginger, grated
1 teaspoon Hot Peppers, chopped
1 Garlic Bulb, peeled and chopped
15 Saffron threads, steeped in 1/2 cup warm water
6 oz. Tomato Paste
1/2 bottle White Wine (The other half is for you to drink. Yay!)
1 teaspoon each: Fennel Seed & Herbs de Provence
3 Bay Leaves
1/2 tablespoon each: Smoked Paprika & Cayenne Pepper
Peels from two Oranges (I used blood oranges because they’re in season, but any orange will suffice. Just wash the damn stickers off)
Olive Oil
Kosher Salt
Chopped parsley (to garnish)
Good French Bread

Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil on medium high in a large stock pot; when the olive oil becomes fragrant add your onions, shallots and a pinch of salt. Keep them moving around until they are translucent but not browned.

Add your sweet peppers to the mix and sweat them out until they get soft.

Be sure to keep them moving- you don’t want to brown a thing.

Throw in your garlic, ginger, dried herbs and a pinch of chopped parsley. Keep it moving for about 90 seconds and make sure the garlic doesn’t brown.

Add the tomato paste, paprika, cayenne and chopped hot peppers. Stir like crazy (preferably with a wooden spoon) for another 2-3 minutes, making sure tomato paste doesn’t stick or burn to the bottom of the pan.

When it looks like most of the moisture has evaporated; dump the wine in.

Add the potatoes, sweet potato, carrots, bay leaves and orange peel. Bring the heat up to high while you try to mix everything around.

There should be enough liquid to cover everything, but if there isn’t, add only enough water to just cover it. Those starches will produce a lot.

As it just comes to a boil; stir and cover it and lower the heat to medium-low. Let it simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour, or until the potatoes are tender. (The sweet potatoes might dissolve entirely. Trust me, you won’t mind)

Once your starches are tender; gently stir in your fish. Let it come back up to a simmer, then cover it and let it be for another fifteen minutes (not too much longer than that or your fish will dissolve).

While that’s simmering away; slice up your baguettes, brush them with olive oil and toast them under your broiler. When the toast is ready; pull it out and rub each piece with a garlic clove.

Did you make any compound butter? I made some with chopped shallot, parsley and saffron. You should probably do that too; well in advance of making your soup.

Holy balls! Your soup is ready!