Hot Tamales

First, marinade some thighs and drumsticks in soy sauce, chopped onion and minced garlic for a couple of hours. I like to do this a zip lock bag, pressing out all the air, so the marinade really gets into the meat.

Then, bake in a 375 degree oven until cooked through and the skin has some nice brown color.  Then shred the meat off the bone.

While you are baking the chicken, make some rice, but don’t cook it to the point where you are trying to get concolón (see Arroz con Concolón for rice instructions.)

Our sofrito here includes carrot, which is not a traditional element in Panamanian aromatics, and points once again to the Chinese influence in this dish.  Saute this up while the chicken and rice are cooking with some garlic until sweated, and set aside.

Once everything is ready, heat up some oil in a pan, and add some rice, veggies, chicken and soy sauce, along with rinsed capers and pitted green olives (stuffed with pimentos, if you can.)

Cook over pretty high heat, and toss to combine.  Then, lower the heat a little, and cover and cook for about two minutes.  Repeat this process until you are out of components.

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Once trim, you end with a piece of meat that is just about 100% pure protein.  Rinse the tripe in several changes of cold water and slice up.

Then bring a good amount of water to a boil, put in some regular white vinegar and boil the tripe for about twenty seconds.  This process helps to get rid of any lingering impurities.

Heat up some oil in a pot, and suate some sofrito of onion, bell pepper, culantro and garlic. I added a little chile powder to have a touch of heat and more complex flavor.

Once sweated, add some tomato paste.  You should mix this into the pot a bit and let it cook a little. This helps take away the raw, almost tinny flavor of the paste (there is a fancy french term for this which I can’t remember and don’t think is worth looking up.)

After a couple of minutes, you can add back the tripe, cook for a minute and add water to just cover.  Let this cook for a couple of hours, covered and on a very low flame.

Meanwhile, slice up some carrots, mushrooms and spanish chorizo.  Also, slice the kernals off a few ears of fresh corn.  You should also prepare the garbanzos by putting the dried beans into plenty of water, bringing to the boil, and cooking on a high simmer for an hour or an hour and a half, until tender but not falling apart.

Have some frozen (better fresh , if you can find them at the farmer’s market) peas ready and some chopped culantro, as well.  These ingredients will be added over the course of the long, slow simmer in a way that will maximize flavor and avoid the total breakdown of the ingredients. Be sure to stir the pot every once in a while throughout the cooking process.  After a couple of hours, pitch in the carrots.

After four more hours, pitch in everything else other than the peas in culantro.  Add enough water so that everything is barely covered.

In the seventh hour, throw in the peas.

After eight hours, put in the culantro and season with s+p.  There should be some liquid, but not much and it should be thick like a minestrone soup.  The tripe should be very tender and have picked up the flavors of all the other ingridients, only keeping a slight tripe flavor that is not overpowering.

This is best eaten with some good bread to soak up the sauce.

Get the edge of the knife under each side of this slit to loosen the skin, and then peel away in skin in one piece from the plantain.

Cut slices about 1/2 inches each.

Press a few cloves of garlic though a garlic press and mix with a pinch of salt.

Heat the oil to about 375 degrees, and drop the plantains.

Let cook for a couple of minutes, flipping them halfway through.

Press in the tosotonera, and spread the garlic paste on the plantain pieces.

Return to the oil, and cook for a few minutes, until the garlic is a browned and the plantains are golden.

Cut the shrimp into small pieces (about half-an-inch long) and put into some water in a pot. Bring the water up to the boil, and drain the shrimp when they are pink.

Rinse under cold water to stop the cooking.

Then put in a bowl along with the prepared pulpo and cover with fresh lime juice (the lime press is key here), a few dashes of soy sauce (again, the Chinese influence on Panamanian cooking).

Culantro (or cliantro if you can’t find culantro) for a fresh, green bite.

And aji chombo, which we call habenero. Aji is a another word for chile in Spanish, and chombo is a Panamanian-only word. Chombo refers to a Panamanian of Afro-Antillean descent, of which there are many who are descendents of people who immigrated to the isthmus to work on the Panama Canal. These folk came mostly from the English-speaking parts of the Caribbean, such as Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and other parts of what was then the British East Indies. These migrants brought with their language and foods, the most prevalent of which is the super-hot chili pepper, the habenero, which the native Panamanians call, basically, the “Chili of the Afro-Antillean Migration”.

Throw in some salt and pepper, and let sit in the fridge for at least an hour – preferably overnight – for the flavors to meld and marry. Serve with saltines, or, if you can find them, the traditional canastina, which taste like really good fortune cookies, and can be found almost nowhere outside of Panama (but can be found at Panastore on Franklin Ave in Brooklyn).

Pat the mixture down with a wooden spoon, and then shake the pan to cook the garlic.  After a minute or two, the kitchen should be smelling really good and the garlic should start to take on an almost woody color.

Put in your pulpo, and toss to coat.  Then cook on a medium flame, tossing every 30 seconds, or so, until the pulpo is warm and the flavors have combined - about 3 mintues in total.

Season with salt, pepper and a squeze of fresh lemon juice.

Take the whole guy (even if still frozen) and boil it until the purple outer layer begins to peel away, and a knife can pierce easily through the flesh at the point where the tentacles merge with the “body” of the octopus.

Drain, and butcher once it is cool enough to handle. You can do this by slicing off each tentacle, and cutting bite sized pieces of the remaining body, throwing the harder “mouth” piece away. You can get some meat out of the head, but you’ll have to trim away any innards. Then trim off any outer skin that is sort of hanging or clinging to the body, and slice bite-sized pieces in rings.

Rinse the whole lot, and you have your pulpo ready to go for ceviche, pulpo al ajillo, guacho or other preparations.

Growing up in New York, tongue was always something I saw on the menu at Katz’s Delicatessen, but never really thought about eating.  It just felt weird and seemed outrageously expensive for such an esoteric cut.  I pretty much forgot about tongue as a food option until I was in Panama, and eating at Restaurante y Pizzeria Napoli.  The Grub Blogger’s lady ordered lengua con macarones without even looking at the menu with an earnest seriousness I knew was only used for special moments.  I quickly translated this in my mind (while I was ordering my pedestrian, but delicious, lasagna) into Pasta with Tongue.  Didn’t sound too good, but, you know, I was in love.  Napoli is one of several quality Italian restaurants in Panama City, representing the immigrants who came to the isthmus over the years, many of whom came to work on the Canal.  Napoli has checkered tablecloths and a busy feeling, especially during lunch on a weekday.  The tongue was served sliced in a rich tomato sauce, clearly with Panamanian accents, over a bed of spaghetti.I went about making my version by first cooking the tongue to get it tender and then building a Panamanian style tomato sauce, using some of the resulting stock to deepen the flavors.  The tongue has a rich, deep beef flavor, with a hint of gamy, almost iron-like taste to it.  It is very tender, but still has some toothiness to it.  I can’t think of anything to compare it to.

Simmer the beef tongue (pictured above is half of a 3-1/2 pound tongue) with some onion, celery, a bay leaf and whole, black peppercorns.

This will simmer for about three hours.  A fork should pass pretty easily into the flesh, but still have some tug to it when you pull it out.  Then drain the stock, and reserve some for the sauce. I want to experiment using a little of this stock in recipes that call for beef stock. It is a hearty broth, so I think a little in a stock made from beef bones would add richness and a deeper beef flavor.

Next, peel off the out layer of skin on the tongue and discard.  There is a second layer of skin that you can keep.  It gets tender and helps to keep your slice together, and well as adding a little texture.  Also remove any fat or grissle.  Then slice the tongue up.

Heat up some olive oil, and saute the sofrito of bell pepper (I used a cubanelle), onion, celery, garlic and culantro.  I also put in a little herb de provence.  The sofrito can be in a rough chop, because the sauce will be pureed.

When the sofito is sweated, put in some of the reserved stock, and simmer for a minute before adding the tomatoes and a bay leaf.

Simmer on high for about 10 minutes, and then puree.  Next time I will do this in a pot so I can puree directly with my immersion blender.  You need some depth in your pot, or the sauce will splatter everywhere when you buzz it.  You can also use a blender or food processor.

Place the slices in the pureed sauce and add enough stock to get the sauce to the consistency of a slightly thicken soup.  Then add the slices of meat, and simmer until the sauce is thick and the flavors blend - about 20 minutes.

Serve over spaghetti.

I first came across guacho (pronounced, WAH-cho) at the fish market in Panama City, where there is a restaurant on a sort of mezzanine sitting above the vendors. Guacho is a rice porridge, almost like a risotto, but made from regular, extra-long grain white rice. The rice is soaked in water for a couple of hours before being simmered in a seafood stock for a few hours, until the grains give up almost all their starch, and expand by about three times. The base flavors come from a sofrito, and the porridge is studded with bite-sized pieces of seafood, mostly shellfish.  Guacho is a classic Panamanian dish, usually cooked for holidays (especially lent) and other festive occasions, but some families will chow down on this during once-a-week get togethers.  This is a dish from the coastal regions of Panama, where fishermen’s families could stretch a little of bit of their catch into a meal for a large extended family.  There are only a few recipes available online, so I took what little information there was, and grafted it to a base of asopao de mariscos recipes I was able to find. Asopao is a rice-based seafood soup found mostly in the Latin Caribbean, and is something I was somewhat familiar with from growing up in NYC.  The key here is slowly simmering the rice in the seafood-flavor liquid to coax the starches out of the rice and marry all the flavors.  The seafood itself is almost a garnish, put in at the end for just enough time for it to cook through.  This is a meal in and of itself, and the only additions I recommend are fresh lime juice and some hot sauce.  

As usual, I went about creating the guacho with a mix of recipes, use of classic technique and memories of the eating the dish. I went to the local fish market and picked up a three pound octopus and a pound of shrimp (shells on), half of each which were used for a ceviche. I also got a small amount of bay scallops (the small guys), some squid (calamar), a handful each of small clams and mussels and a whole, farmed-raised sea bass, filleted (I asked for the bones for my stock). Everything else I had in the pantry or fridge.

It is possible that guacho is related to paella, as the both are seafood based rice dishes, with a marked yellow/orange color to the dish. The color in guacho comes from a native source, much less costly and rare than the Spanish saffron used in paella. The annatto seed (or achiote) is used as a natural food dye in most of the Caribbean, and found its way to Panama, which is in many ways is a Caribbean nation. To extract the color from the seed, I heated up enough canola oil to cover the bottom of my dutch oven, and added a palmful of seeds.

Shake them around a little, and in a few minutes the oil takes on a reddish tone. You will also notice a nutty, earthy aroma as the seeds start to darken.

At this point, scoop the seeds out and discard. You now have achiote oil.

The next step is to build some flavor into the base in which the rice will simmer so we don’t end up with red gruel. Here we use a standard Panamanian sofrito. I chopped up some red bell and cubanelle peppers, celery and onion, and passed a handful of garlic cloves through my press.

These go into the hot achiote oil, along with a handful of chopped culantro.

The heat breaks down some of the cell walls of the vegetables and releases the moisture trapped within, making it look like the vegetables are sweating - this takes about five minutes. The vegetables should not start to brown.

Next, I tossed in the mussels and clams.

My thought here was to get as much flavor out of them as possible and into the flavor base. I think if I added them into the rice, the flavor would get lost and not be intensified. I put a little bit of the stock into the pot to give the bivalves something to steam in. Cover the pot, and check every 30 seconds, or so. As they open, make sure they lose their raw appearance, and pop them out into a bowl. You can knock them and shake them around a bit to coax them open.

At this point, the apartment was smelling really good, and I had barely begun to start cooking. Notice to liquid in the pot now – that came from the shellfish and tastes real good.

The last element of the flavor base is a small can of regular tomato sauce. This adds some more color, a bit of richness and a hint of vegetal flavor to the finished dish. The bay leaf adds some earthiness and a slight bitter undertone. We are building flavor here, which is what cooking stews and soups is really about.

Next we pitch in the yucca. This was an interesting touch I read in the one recipe I was able to find. The recipe suggested using cooked yucca or green plantains at the end of cooking to thicken up the guacho. I thought it made more sense to put the yucca in raw, and let the starches breakdown along with the rice. In the end, I didn’t need the extra thickener, but I like the chew that the yucca gave to the almost creamy end product. Also, it gave an echo to the potatoes in a clam chowder, which connection I liked.

Next went in the rice, and a small bottle of clam juice to fortify the steamed shellfish and fish stock.

At this point, I added enough fish stock to cover by about an inch and brought to a low simmer. Here is where I started to make the risotto connection, as I had to stir the pot fairly often to prevent the rice from scorching on the bottom of the pot and add ladlefuls of stock to the rice, as it absorbed the liquid.

Once almost all the rice has expanded to above three times its original size, and the guacho has a fairly creamy consistency, stir in all the seafood, and continue to simmer for about 10 minutes, until the seafood is cooked.

Hit with a couple of limes and some fresh culantro, and you are ready to go.

This pot yielded about 12 healthy serving, most of which are sitting in freezer bags in my freezer.

]]> http://www.grubblogger.com/2009/12/23/guacho/feed/ http://www.grubblogger.com/2009/12/19/arroz-con-concolon/ http://www.grubblogger.com/2009/12/19/arroz-con-concolon/#comments Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:03:25 +0000 Grub Blogger http://www.grubblogger.com/?p=694 The first thing the sous chefs asked me to cook at Spago during my externship (see my About page for more on that experience) was rice.  Luckily, this was the first thing my mom taught me cook, as well.  I made a huge pot of soft, fluffy rice as part of family meal for the whole crew.  I overheard them commenting that it was pretty good, but a little overcooked.  I had left to to sit a bit too long before fluffing it up, but I passed the test.  When I cooked this style of rice for my lady, she politely ate it, but I could tell it wasn’t what she was used to.  Spending time down in Panama with her parents, I learned that unless the rice has concolón or concho, you are not really eating rice.  When I started at them, not finding the translation, they told me, “crunchy.”  Panamanian’s like their rice cooked dry, with a crust that forms on the bottom of the pan, browning (but not burning) the layer that is touching the pot.  Concho most directly translates as “dregs” or “lees”, but also describes this layer of light, golden-brown rice on the bottom of the pot.  I also learned that the type of pot (paila) that you use is important.  It should be not much bigger than the amount of rice you are going to cook, and made from cast aluminum (these are called calderos in much of Latin America), which helps build the “crunch” because it is heavy and a slow conductor of heat.  I picked mine up at a local supermarket.

Concolón’s etymology is much more interesting that concho’s.  The story goes that on the Colombus’ journeys to and from the New World, he, as all captains are supposed to, only ate after his whole crew got there share.  Only a select few would be invited to dine with Columbus, whose rice was from the bottom of the pot, and therefore had the entire layer of crunch.  Columbus is translated as “Colón” in Spanish, so those who ate crunchy rice ate con Colón, which was turned into its own word over the years in Panama.  The key to getting the rice dry and crunchy on the bottom is to boil most of the water out of the pot, and then slowly steam off the rest, while building a browned layer of rice on the bottom.  This recipes uses regular long grain rice.

Measure out your water and rice in a 2:1 ratio.  In Panama, they usually just make sure that the water covers the rice in the paila by one finger, laid parallel to the bottom of the pot.  Put water and rice in a pot with a fair amount of vegetable oil (this will help with the concolón) and a little salt.

Boil until the water is pretty much evaporate.  Give it a little stir to make sure there is not a large pool of water in the bottom of the pan.

Cover and set the heat to low.

Check it after about 20 minutes, and give a stir, being sure to not disturb the rice on the bottom of the pan.  Check every five minutes, and cook until the concolón has formed.  You should check more often as you get closer, to make sure you don’t burn the rice on the bottom.  This might take awhile.  You can certainly eat it once the rice is dry, but to get the real deal, you need to wait patiently while the rice slowly toasts to a light, golden brown.