Hudut

As tradition built it

Hudutu, Chef Carlos Espinal's recipe

Broadcast on Honduran television (Buen Provecho, GO TV Honduras); roughly 25 minutes, serves two

Ingredients

For the machuca

• 1 green plantain
• 1 ripe plantain
• for deep-frying vegetable oil

For the hudutu broth

• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 3 cups coconut milk
• ¼ cup sweet basil
• 4 fresh cilantro leaves, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• ½ teaspoon annatto powder
• 1 whole corvina, sea bass
• to taste salt and pepper

Method

1. Peel and dice the plantains.
2. Boil the green plantain for 4 minutes, then add the ripe plantain and continue until both soften.
3. Mash to a uniform, elastic paste, explicitly compared by the source to fufu, and form into balls, using lightly oiled hands to keep the paste from sticking as it is shaped.
4. Separately, sauté the onion and garlic in the vegetable oil, seasoned with salt and pepper as it cooks.
5. Add the coconut milk, basil, cilantro, paprika and annatto, bring to the boil, then reduce to medium.
6. Cut the fish, corvina or sea bass, into medallions, add to the broth, and cook 10 minutes on low to medium heat.

Notes

Terminology is genuinely unsettled in the sources behind this chapter: some use hudut for the whole composite dish, others reserve machuca for a related mashed-plantain preparation eaten with fried rather than broth-cooked fish, and this chapter states that uncertainty rather than resolving it without a source that actually can.

What a modern chef changes

A clarified broth and a precise fish

Rung 02, 03

Method

1. Reduce a portion of the coconut milk slowly and separately, then pass it through a chinois before folding it back into the main broth, for a rounder, less thin result than simmering the whole broth together produces, since the broth is entirely coconut milk with no separate stock.
2. Cook the corvina medallions sous vide, briefly, to a precise, still-translucent doneness, and add them to the finished broth only at the point of serving, rather than simmering them through with everything else until they overcook.
3. For the machuca, blend the boiled plantain in a high-power blender rather than mashing entirely by hand, for a smoother, more genuinely fufu-like elasticity, then finish briefly with a wooden spoon to restore some texture at the surface, since a blender alone can push the paste past the point where it holds its own shape as a ball.