Puerto Rican Cooking for Beginners

By Chef Didi

  "Puerto Rican Cooking for Beginners" was written to introduce the world to some of the undiscovered foods of Puerto Rican Cuisine and the history behind the recipes and introduce the fantastic flavors of the island. I studied Savory cooking and French pastries. I chose a few of my favorite dishes,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Dec 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822902039

Book preview

Introduction

W

e love to grow our own vegetables and herbs! Cooking typical dishes from Puerto Rico is truly an adventure. You need an open mind and a desire to cook and experiment with different flavors. Latin flavors.

We plant yucca, cassava, pumpkin, yautia, and other root vegetables. We use recaito (culantro leaves), cilantro (coriander), ajíes dulce (sweet peppers), bay leaves, and yes—parsley, oregano, and basil; they are among our favorites. We grow them in our backyards or have miniature gardens on our windowsills to use for our daily needs. We create seasonings like adobo, sofrito, and many dry rubs. Mixing different herbs gives us different flavors to get the Sabor Boricua, that tremendous Puerto Rican flavor that is second to none.

Puerto Rican cuisine is a blend of several cuisines that include Spanish, African, Taíno,¹ and American influences. Our food blend is usually known as comida criolla. We are very proud of the definition of a well-blended melting pot. Criolla means Creole cooking.

We grow and harvest many of the root vegetables we cook with. We also have beautiful gardens of flowers and medicinal herbs. Many farmers still raise cows, pigs, and chickens.

Unlike most ethnic foods, the original version of Puerto Rican cooking is quite detailed, and some do take many hours to prepare, sometimes days. The final presentation is a fantastic dish everyone will discuss for months.

We still love to cook and experiment with flavors and dishes in the modern world. We still grow some herbs at home in small pots and use modern equipment like food processors to make things faster. However, we now shop in Spanish colmados, Hispanic stores, and even specialty stores.

This book is for beginners, entrepreneurs, and anyone who loves great food and sexy desserts. Oh, yes, we make very delectable desserts. They turn on all your senses. Trust me. Even the aroma will drive you crazy and make it unbearable to not taste or wait for the final products. Yes, you will break your diet.

1 The Taíno race were indigenous people that were the principal inhabitants of most Caribbean islands, such as Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, to name a few. They were the first people on the island discovered by Christopher Columbus, the explorer, in 1942.

The Puerto Rican

Holiday Feast

L

et me walk you through our preparation and give you a mental vision of how it is done. In some areas of Puerto Rico, still to this day, done for the Christmas holiday. With big families, we still roast a whole pig.

We usually roast a whole pig weighing anywhere from 50 to 150 pounds. The size depends on how big the family or celebration is. We buy it from a local farmer, who will kill and clean it for us. We will have a location for the festival, usually outdoors. This place will have a giant barbecue