Sopa de caracol

As tradition built it

Sopa de caracol

Documented by Honduran press (La Prensa, El Heraldo)

Ingredients

• 2 fillets conch, cut into roughly two-inch squares, lightly tenderised
• 1 cup coconut milk
• ½ pound yuca
• 2 green plantains plantain
• 1 green and 1 ripe plantain machuca (mashed plantain formed into balls), to serve on the side

Method

1. Build a white, undyed, coconut-forward soup made with coconut milk, with comparatively few vegetables, chiefly yuca and plantain.
2. Cook the conch only briefly, around five minutes, because any longer toughens it past the point of pleasant eating.
3. Serve with machuca, mashed plantain formed into balls, on the side rather than folded into the soup.

Notes

This stands against the more commonly seen commercial version, coloured orange with annatto.

What a modern chef changes

Precision on the one variable that matters

Rung 01, 03

Method

1. Cook the conch sous vide, at a precise low temperature for a controlled few minutes, for an even, genuinely tender result rather than the uneven texture a quick open-pot boil can give a thick-walled mollusc, since the single variable that matters most is exactly the one the tradition already names: do not over-cook the conch, and do not colour the broth.
2. Build the broth's body from a slow reduction of coconut milk with the yuca and plantain, passed through a chinois for a silkier, whiter result with no annatto anywhere near it, keeping faith with the tradition's own stated correctness rather than modernising away from it.
3. Serve the machuca balls formed with a hand-held ice-cream scoop for a genuinely neater, more even shape than hand-rolling gives, a small, honest kitchen convenience rather than a real technique change.