Immigrant Kitchens: Puerto Rican Fish Cakes and Avocado Salad

Puerto Rican Fish Cakes, Avocado Salad and Rice and Beans

Veronica Toro-Ruiz was a student at my last Iraqi cooking class. But because she was Puerto Rican, she soon became my teacher. Weeks later in her apartment she taught me this awesome Puerto Rican feast: fish cakes, avocado salad, and beans and rice. And this is how the good things of the world make their way to us: they're given, taken in, and passed on; given, taken in and passed on. Keep it up, people! Click at right for the full story, how-to-photos, the recipes, and live cooking classes.

The Recipe - Fish Cakes and Avocado Salad

Puerto Rican Fish Cakes and Avocado Salad

Bacalaitos Fritos Gazpacho

As Veronica Toro-Ruiz, from Ponce, Puerto Rico, taught Lindsay Sterling in Quincy, MA, March 2012

Serves 8

Cooking Time 45 min

16 oz salted pollock or cod (8 oz for fishcakes + 8 oz for the avocado salad below)

1 1/2 cup flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

2 pinch salt

1 clove garlic, minced

1 1/2 cup water

sprinkle fresh pepper

small handful cilantro leaves ripped into pieces

1-2 cups vegetable oil for frying (or lard) - enough to make about a 1/2" deep in your pan.

You find salted fish (under names bacalao, salted pollock or salt cod) in the refrigerator case . Boil two pots of water. Turn off heat and add fish to one pot. Soak to remove some of the salt, while you mix the next ingredients. In a mixing bowl, mix flour, baking powder, garlic, salt, and pepper. Add water to make a batter; mix with wooden spoon. Drain fish. Add fish to second pot of fresh hot water and soak again for a couple minutes. Strain and shred with fingers. Mix half of the fish (8 oz) and cilantro pieces into the batter, reserving the other half for the avocado salad. Heat oil about 1/2" inch deep in a large skillet. When oil is hot, add a spoonful of batter to make a cake. Add as many cakes to the pot as there is room, leaving generous space between each. Don't fuss with the cakes until you see the bottom edge starting to brown. Then flip the cake away from you (so hot oil never splatters in your direction). When the cake is golden brown on both sides, remove with a slotted spoon or tongs and let rest on a paper towel.

Avocado Salad

Gazpacho de bacalao

1 Dominican or Puerto Rican avocado (or 4 Hass), cut into bite sized chunks

8oz. boiled and shredded salted pollock or cod (prepared in fish cake recipe)

2 thin circular slices onion, cut into 1 inch round segments

1 tomato large dice

3 oz. flavorful olive oil

8 grinds pepper

lemon juice (optional)

Mix all ingredients in a bowl gently so as to dress evenly without mashing the avocado. Add a lemon juice if you want to discourage the salad from turning brown. Taste the salad before you think of adding salt - the fish is already salty!

The Story

Fish Cakes In Your Future

By Lindsay Sterling

We love our fish cakes in Maine. They’re usually a mixture of breadcrumbs, egg, seafood, and parsley, formed into cylinders and deep-fried. There is nothing wrong with them. They’re delicious. But I’m always on the lookout for something new, surprising, or otherworldly. As we were eating Iraqi chicken and rice at one of my cooking classes in Freeport, a young woman with brown-black hair, dark eyes and a tattoo of a scarab beetle on her forearm shared that she was Puerto Rican. It was in her apartment weeks later I found what I didn’t even know I was looking for: different fishcakes. And a phenomenal use of our own salt cod!

Introducing Veronica Toro-Ruiz’s bacalaitos fritos, to-die-for fried biscuits with small moments of salted fish and cilantro. Here’s how you make them. In a bowl, you put flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix in water to make a batter. Add some ripped cilantro leaves and pulled pieces of salted pollock or cod that you’ve boiled first to remove some of the preserving salt. Then shallow fry large spoonfuls of this batter in oil. While the golden patties rest on paper towels, just try not to eat them! Veronica goaded me on, “Go ahead. They’re best when they’re hot.” I had three before we even sat down. These fish cakes were divine with her simple avocado salad. She cut up a giant avocado from the Dominican Republic, then added shaved raw onion, more boiled and pulled salted fish, a generous drizzle of flavorful olive oil, and a final pinch of salt. That avocado from the Dominican Republic was as smooth and rich as a stick of butter. We’ve got to convince more storeowners to supply these!

I always like to find out what powers to thank for bringing my cooking teachers and their delicious foods from all over the world to me. This time I need to thank a certain bruja (witch) in the Dominican Republic, where Veronica was working on a film. Some local coworkers escorted Veronica to this bruja as fun cultural experience. The bruja demanded that Veronica bring fried chicken, beer, and candles to her shell reading. It was unclear if this was part of a ritual, or la bruja just wanted dinner. After the offering was accepted, la bruja let forth Veronica’s fortune: “You gonna have an affair with a white man with money who is coming.”

Veronica was like, “Yeah right. Like when?” La bruja: “This weekend.”

Her co-workers joked endlessly about Veronica’s boyfriend, the rich man who was coming. But then the crew got a communication from the production department. A guy from the parent company in the U.S. was coming that day with $30K in his pocket to pay the cast and crew. And his name was Rich! There was such a buzz around the set – her boyfriend is coming! – that when Veronica and Rich finally came to be standing next to one another, a 15-year-old actor asked Veronica flat out, “Is this your boyfriend?” Veronica looked at Rich approvingly and said, “I think he will be tomorrow.” After a weeklong fling and lots of ensuing emails and visits, Veronica and Rich moved in together in New England. May we all make her fishcakes happily ever after.

See How to Do It

Puerto Rican Rice and Beans

Arroz Con Gandules

Saute onions and garlic in oil.

Add sofrito and tomato sauce. You can find this sofrito in the Latin section of the supermarket.

Add rice and saute so it soaks in all those great flavors. Saute a bit. Then add beans, gandules, also called pigeon peas (in the islands "peas" are beans!).

She added the liquid from the can as well.

Add a packet of seasoning (Sazon Goya Con Azafran) to 2 cups water and pour in.

Cook on medium high, stirring with wooden spoon, until liquid is almost all sucked up. Make a mound of the solids in the middle of the pot.

Cover and cook on low for 22 min. And voila.

Puerto Rican Fish Cakes

First bring your salt pollock or cod to a simmer, turn off heat, and let for a little to lessen the salt content in the fish. Then drain and break the fish into little pieces.

She used this pollock, called bacalao which she found in the refrigerator of Tropical Supermarket, in Roxbury, MA.