Immigrant Kitchens: Puerto Rican Rice and Beans

The Recipe - Rice and Beans

Puerto Rican Rice and Beans

Arroz con Grandules

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

Cooking time: 1 hr

Serves: 4-5

1 clove garlic, minced

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup Goya sofrito (in Latin isle of market)*

1/2 yellow onion, large dice

1/4 c. tomato sauce

1/2 roasted red pepper or jarred pimiento sliced into 3 pieces

2 cups medium grain rice

15 oz. can pigeon peas (substitute Kidney beans if you can't find these)

1 packet Goya seasoning: Sazon Con Azafran (in Latin isle of market)**

2 cups water

5 green olives, sliced off pit

banana leaves (available in the freezer at Latin or Asian markets)

Saute garlic, onion, and sofrito in olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot with lid. When onion is soft, add 1/4 cup tomato sauce and roasted red pepper or pimiento. Let cook 2 minutes. Add rice, stir and cook. Add 1 can pigeon peas with the liquid from the can. Dissolve Goya Sazon Con Azafran or homemade seasoning below with 2 cups water and add to rice. Liquid should just cover ingredients by about 1/4" above solids. Add sliced green olives. Stir to incorporate and then let cook - lid off - without touching on medium. Get banana leaves out of the freezer. Rinse under water until pliable. Cut planks of leave with scissors so that you can cover the top of your pot completely. Once liquid has almost disappeared from the rice, pull the contents of pot away from edges into a mound in the center of the pot. Cover the pot opening with banana leaf and then put the pot lid on top of that, and cook 22 minutes on low.

*Homemade sofrito:

1 green pepper

1 red pepper (if you can find aji peppers in a tropical market, use those!)

1 bunch cilantro (or it's cousin, recaito, if you can find it!)

1 onion

1/2 head garlic

2 large ripe tomatoes

Cut all ingredients into large pieces and blend in blender or Cuisinart. Use 1/3 cup for the rice and beans you're making today, and fill small Ziplocks with 1/3 cup each and freeze. You will be making this dish all the time!

** Homemade spice mixture instead of Goya's sazon packet:

1 tsp annato or achiote powder

1/2 tsp saffron

1/4 tsp turmeric

1/4 tsp paprika

1 tsp salt

Mix. This is the right amount for the above recipe - rice and beans.

Note: Some of the rice will have formed a crust on the bottom of the pan. This is called pegado (she doesn't pronounce the d) and it's crunchy and delicious. After dinner, scrape it up with a metal spatula or spoon and eat it for seconds.

For step by step pictures, click at right: "See How She Did It."

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.