Subanik

As tradition built it

Subanik

Cooked 1 hour 30 minutes over a low heat.

Ingredients

The meat

• 900g pork ribs, in small pieces
• 900g beef ribs, in small pieces
• 450g hen breast, in small pieces
• a little oil
• 1 maxán leaf, dried

The recado

• as needed water
• 450g tomatoes
• 1 medium onion
• 1 large chile pimiento
• 1 chile pasa
• 2 chiles guaque
• 2 chiles zambo
• 5 chiles cobaneros
• 3 chiles secos
• 5 dried chiltepe

The bundle

• 1 bunch cibaque (fibre, for tying)
• 1 pack maxán leaves

Method

1. Sear the meat in hot oil, 3 minutes a side over a medium heat, with a dry maxán leaf in the pan.
2. Put the tomato, onion, chile pimiento and the dried chiles in a large pot with enough water and cook over a medium heat for 20 minutes. Blend it all to a fine sauce.
3. Soak the cibaque in a wide bowl of water. Pull the strands straight and knot them at one end.
4. Lay the cibaque in a clay pot with the knot at the bottom, the strands spread out like a spider's web. Soak the maxán leaves in hot water and lay them neatly over it.
5. Put the meat in and pour the recado over it. Close the leaves over the top one by one, gently, and plait the strands to finish.
6. Put water in the pot and cook over a low heat for an hour and a half.

Notes

Multiple independently corroborating Guatemalan sources trace subanik specifically to San Martín Jilotepeque and the Kaqchikel Maya, not Verapaz or Q'eqchi', correcting the early scoping.

The recipe is the Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes de Guatemala's, from its Sistema de Información Cultural. Aprende Guatemala precooks the meat in a little water, strains the recado, thickens it with masa and cooks the bundle 2 hours over a medium heat. The previous serving and time figures came from a Western blog.

What a modern chef changes

Meats cooked apart, leaf lightly charred

Method

1. Cook each of the three meats sous vide separately, to the doneness that actually suits it, chicken and pork to a moist finish, beef held longer for tenderness, rather than steaming all three together to a single, compromised result.
2. Build the red recado in the spice grinder and high-power blender, toasting the dried chiles first for real depth.
3. Steam the finished parcels in a Big Green Egg run as a closed, humid oven, banana or chard leaf standing in for maxán, which has no UK source, and finish with a light pass of direct heat at the very end to lightly char the wrapping leaf, a genuine echo of the open-fire cooking the dish would traditionally have known.

Notes

Banana or chard leaf stands in for maxán, which has no UK source.