Nicaraguan fried pork with cabbage, yuca, and pigskin chips

She calls the dish chancho frito and vigoron. It’s Nicaraguan party food. “Vigoron eat with your fingers,” Jenny Sanchez, my Nicaraguan-American neighbor coaches me. We’re in her kitchen three blocks from L.L. Bean. “No fork o no espoon.” Okay, I think, you eat it with your fingers. I get it. “If you a scared,” she looks at me seriously, “I get you a fork.”

The rewards are big for fearlessness. Try cooking it. If you a scared, read this primer on new ingredients first.

The Recipe

Nicaraguan Chancho Frito and Vigoron

Fried pork rib bites on a salad of cabbage, lime, and yuca

As Jenny Sanchez, from Leon, Nicaragua, taught Lindsay Sterling in Freeport, ME, June 2009

Total time: about 2 hours

Serves 4-6

Chancho Frito

Simmered-then-fried pork ribs

2 lbs boneless pork ribs, cut into 1 inch chunks

½ tsp achiote (annatto) powder

½ tsp salt

2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed

½ cup distilled vinegar

½ cup water

Rinse pork ribs with water, cut into 1” chunks, and put in a saute pan that has a lid. Immediately wash cutting board, knife, and anything that has touched raw meat. Rub achiote, salt and garlic all over meat with hands. Wash hands. Cook on medium, covered, until meat is ½ submerged in its own juices, about 20 min. Add water and vinegar. Cook covered for about 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally w/ wooden spoon, until meat is tender. While that’s cooking, make the vigoron (below). Once the pork is tender (the liquid will have nearly all disappeared except the liquified pork fat), remove the lid and let pork pieces sizzle and fry until browned.

Vigoron

Salad of cabbage, yuca, fried pig skins and lime

½ large bag fried pork skins (about 2 cups), may be called chicharrones

2 lbs yuca

1/3 cabbage

1-2 limes

½ tsp + ½ tsp salt or more

2 tomatoes

Put pot of water on to boil. Clean yuca by cutting into 2-inch thick rounds. Cut off thick woody skin. (See video) Flesh should be white; any gray marks mean it’s old. Rub white chunks with ½ tsp salt and rinse. Boil in water until mushy but firm, like cooked potato. Chop cabbage like Jenny does to get the delicious, light texture. Toss with fresh lime juice (use a spoon to press right into the lime to release juices). Salt cabbage more than seems sane, about ½ tsp for 1/3 cabbage. (The lime begs for a lot of salt!) Taste the cabbage. It should be bright and tangy, but not salty. Chop tomatoes into 8 wedges, then across, to get triangular bite size pieces, and decorate top of cabbage. Break up fried pig skins into bite size pieces and put into a bowl. When yuca is done, drain and let cool to the touch. There is a fiber going through the middle of the yuca root just like the one inside a pear. As you are cutting the cooked yuca into ½ inch pieces for the salad, discard that fiber. Put yucca in a serving dish.

Assembly:

Lay out all the fixin’s buffet-style in this order: a bowl of yuca, then fried pig skins, then cabbage, then chancho frito. On the plate, each person places a small handful of yuca, a small handfull of pig skins, a giant handful of lime salad, and 5 or 6 pieces of pork ribs.

Notes:

This is Nicaraguan party food, and they eat it with their hands. It’s pretty fun, but, as Jenny said, “If you a scared, I get you a fork.”

Traditionally, the pork rib bites are bone-in, which can be hard to find here. I used the readily available boneless pork ribs and they were great. But the bones give the dish even more flavor – and fun if your people like the gnawing thing. If you are tight with a butcher, try asking for bone-in pork ribs cut crosswise in 1 inch segments.

Please email lindsay@lindsaysterling.com with questions or comments regarding this recipe.

copyright Lindsay Sterling 2009

See how to do it

Nicaraguan Chancho Frito and Vigoron
Pork rib bites with cabbage, lime, yuca and fried pig skins

How to work with yuca:





Achiote powder comes in a large spice bottle or clear packets:







Boiled yuca, cut into bite size pieces

breaking up fried pig skins


How to cut cabbage so it's ruffled - the perfect texture for Vigoron:








copyright Lindsay Sterling 2009

The Story

Hot Exotic Adventure TONIGHT
Shave cabbage, rub pork ribs, peel yuca and more.

By Lindsay Sterling

Unless you’re a vegetarian or fried-pigskin-intolerant, I have an adventure for you. It requires about 3 hours. It’s exotic, but does not require calling phone numbers in the "relationships" section of your friendly alternative newsweekly. Depending on who you are, it requires little or a lot of bravery. It’s called cooking. You know, that thing people used to do before capitalism infiltrated the home kitchen? Before potato chips and granola bars and mac n’ cheese?

If you have ever described yourself as “not a good cook,” I have theory for you. You think that you are missing the “good cook” or “creativity” gene, but I think it was capitalism, feminism (sorry ladies!), World War II, the industrial revolution, and the digital age that did it. If you were born in America, you probably know how to do what your parents did, which was more than likely serve something that was actually cooked up by their corporate parents, Lean Cuisine, Stouffers, McDonalds, Wendy’s, et al. Those companies cook for one reason, and it’s not to pass on the sheer human pleasure in experiencing the awesomeness of the food.

But that is why Jenny Sanchez, a Nicaraguan-American, gets up from a horrible night of rheumatoid arthritis pain to hobble around her kitchen and teach me (and therefore you) just how to cook chancho frito and vigoron. (That saying, “share the love,” shows such desperation because if it’s true love, sharing goes without saying.) In this dish, waxy, firm, mildly sweet yuca, dry crispy pork skins, lime-dressed shaved cabbage, and tangy tender fried pork rib bites, all come together right at the end. Any attempt at packaging this dish will fail. It has to be made directly for dear people to eat right now. Shelf life: zero. Table life: about 15 minutes.

So. Are you with me? On this adventure, first we must pack our bags. Go to your town's Latin market (mine is La Bodega Latina, 863 Congress St, in Portland, Maine) to get the following three things. Before you say, "My town doesn't have a latin market," think about what I just said. My town's Latin market bla bla bla MAINE. Now, if online searches come up blank, remember, the web is a know-it-all who does not know it all. Ask the next Spanish speaker you hear.

Achiote Powder. It’s the secret ingredient in the pork. Also known as annatto, it looks and smells like chili powder, but it’s not spicy. It adds tangy flavor and an inexplicable delicious-looking deep orange color to the food. Whole seeds from the achiote tree (Bixa orellana) are also available, but they’re too hard for my coffee grinder. For this dish, definitely buy the powder form, available in small clear packets or a large spice jar.

Yuca. Yuca is pronounced Yoo Ka. It’s a long, hard, thick, brown-skinned root, bigger than a sweet potato but with the same oblong irregular shape. La Bodega seems to always have it. So does Mittapheap international market (61 Washington Ave, Portland, ME) and quite often, the major New England supermarket chain, Hannaford. Don’t get yucca – that’s a cactus-like plant, a totally different species.

Fried Pig Skins. They’re like profound potato chips – salty, fatty, crunchy -- with added animal influence. They come in clear bags. The brand Jenny bought was called Chicharrones, and she got them at Mittapheap (61 Washington Ave, Portland, ME). I’ve seen UTZ, that pretzel company, also sells a variety. I’m working on finding some local pig skin to fry.

Now, here's the whole recipe. And come to my cooking class Friday night, Oct 9, 2009 at the Freeport Community Center to cook Chancho Frito and Vigoron with me live. Email lindsay@lindsaysterling.com to reserve a spot.

Will American Kids Like It?

Nicaraguan Chancho Frito and Vigoron!

I set it up well. This was Nicaraguan party food. You get to eat it with your hands! Once they got through the typical um... what's this? Something new and therefore detestable? They loved it. This picture captures them chanting with glee "Chancho Frito!" instead of "Cheese!"

A month later, Elli (at left) suggested I serve it at her 6th birthday party.

Really? Instead of hot dogs? Really, I began to imagine... What would happen? A party of typical American kids and Nicaraguan food. Hm.

Before a spread of unusual fixins' I lead the young crowd of two- to seven-year-olds in a cheer: "CHANCHO FRITO! And VIGORON!"

They repeated with summer-camp-trained gusto: "CHANCHO FRITO and VIGORON!"

I showed them how to make their plates. First the yuca, then the fried pig skins, then the cabbage, then the pork bites. They assembled with seriousness, and an incomprehensible mixture of confidence and reluctance.

They sat at the picnic table. All was quiet. They appeared to be eating.

No one said Yuck! What the heck is this? No one said weird! No one crossed their arms. No one stuck their lip out. Elli, her dear mother sighed with relief, appeared to be safe from social destruction. For all I know, most kids ate somewhere between no bites and a couple, because the next time I looked over, the kids were running around the picnic table. I don't know what this means. I feal like a scientist who went out for coffee and missed IT HAPPEN, whatever her life-long experiment was.

Our learning for the day: a picnic table sprint is more fun for most American kids than Nicaraguan food.

But then, wait, there's still something happening. A kid, a latecomer.... the picnic-table-go-round has morphed into a quiet gathering around a distant tree, so this latecomer is eating without distraction. He's loving it. He's going for a second serving. He's not slowing down.



So there you have it. The learning for the day has just bloomed into something real. My two daughters, and their one friend make: THREE AMERICAN KIDS EAT NICARAGUAN FOOD AND LOVE IT.

Now that is solid. Should I call the papers?

This kid has just inspired in me a poem:

FEAR NOT FRIED PIG SKINS. FEAR NOT YUCA ROOT.
FEAR NOT ACHIOTE. FEAR NOT THIS FOOD.
EAT TO THE BEAT OF YOUR OWN HUNGRY HEART.
IF YOU ARE FEARLESS, YOU WILL BE FULL.

The Recipe - Iranian Saffron Rice

 Iranian Saffron Rice

 As Shadi Towfighi from Iran taught Lindsay Sterling in Bath, Maine in 2009.

7 Tbsp ghee

1 ½ cup basmati rice

salt

1 cup plain yogurt

1 tsp saffron

1 egg

canola oil

Soak rice in salted water for three hours. 

In a large pot, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil, add rice and bring back to boil. 

Crush saffron with mortar and pestle into a powder. 

In a small pot, heat 5 Tbsp ghee with saffron on low until color turns gold.

Into a heavy pot with lid (Le Creuset works well) add two tablespoons ghee and enough canola oil to cover the bottom. Turn the heat up to high. Add plain yogurt and one whole egg, mix. Add strained rice (it's boiled for a bit, but not not cooked all the way). 

Flatten the rice without mixing, and drizzle the saffron-ghee over the top. Turn heat to low. Cover the casserole dish with its lid wrapped in a towel (to keep the water vapor from dripping back down into the rice), and simmer 20 minutes. Use a thin metal spatula to include some of thecrispy bottom with each serving.

Serve with Iranian eggplant.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2009 

The Recipe - Iranian Eggplant

Iranian Eggplant Stew

As Shadi Towfighi from Iran taught Lindsay Sterling in Bath, Maine.

Serves 4-6

1 c. dried yellow split peas

Organic Canola oil

½ yellow onion, sliced

1 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp black pepper

21/2 c. basic tomato sauce

1 ½ Tbsp tamarind paste

4 small eggplants

4 tomatoes, green or red

Soak rinsed split yellow peas and rice in separate bowls for four hours. 

Two and a half hours before dinnertime, peel eggplant, slice into quarters lengthwise, and salt generously all sides. 

Cover bottom of a heavy pot with canola oil, sauté onion until edges crisp, and add drained split yellow peas. Add turmeric, tomato sauce, and tamarind paste (mixed into 2 cups water). Stir periodically, adding water to moisten to stew consistency, for two hours or until peas become soft. 

Thirty minutes before serving, heat ½ inch of oil in a large heavy fry pan. Dry eggplant pieces with a towel and fry each side until deeply golden, draining the finished pieces of eggplant in a strainer over a plate. 

Slice tomatoes in half and fry until soft and golden. Place eggplant and tomatoes on top of stew. Serve with crispy saffron rice.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2009

The Story

Iranian Eggplant Stew

By Lindsay Sterling

I went to the Kismet Inn a couple blocks from the water in downtown Bath, Maine, to learn how to cook the innkeeper’s Iranian eggplant stew. Shadi Towfighi greeted me. Her shoulder length, wavy, gray and black hair surrounded her round face. She offered me slippers and glass of tea brewed with cardamom. “Yes,” she said, as we headed toward the kitchen, “I was born in Iran.” She pronounced it, ee-RON. She lived there until she was thirteen. Then she went to boarding school in England, and has lived most of the rest of her life in the United States.

She’d begun cooking long before I arrived. On the counter were bowls of rice and yellow split peas soaking in water, and a bowl of homemade tomato sauce, which she’d made from organic farm tomatoes (sun-drenched on her porch for weeks “for more vitamin C”), cooked on low with garlic, black pepper, and a mix of thyme, oregano and dill. She opened a spice jar and gave me a whiff of her homegrown herb blend. My sinuses awoke. And so our cooking session went, moment by moment revealing detail, after detail of care.

            While the stew simmered we talked. To my surprise she said, “Women [in Iran] are doctors, engineers, dancers, firefighters, taxi drivers, chefs, restaurant owners, writers, bookshop owners.” She continued, “Brilliant Iranian women and men write. It’s a profound old culture, that’s what it is.” In decorating the inn, Towfighi has combined colorful weavings and a filigreed silver tea set from her mother’s dowry with African textiles and contemporary art and furniture by local artisans: two painters, a woodworker, and a blacksmith. The result is surprisingly serene, clean, and profoundly refreshing.

We finished with a feast. China on a white tablecloth displayed an earthy brown mix of pickled scallions, shallots, and green beans, bright yellow saffron rice with a crispy bottom, and fresh garden cucumber salad with onion and tomato. The main dish was a gorgeous golden tumble of chunks of shallow-fried green tomato and eggplant on a reddish gold stew.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2009