Vigorón

As tradition built it

Vigorón

Credited to María Luisa Cisneros Lacayo, Granada, 1914

Ingredients

• 1kg yuca, peeled and cut into large pieces
• 2 cloves garlic
• to taste salt
• ½ head cabbage, raw, shredded
• 2 tomato
• 1 onion
• to taste chile
• to taste vinegar, for the cabbage salad
• to taste chicharrón
• juice of 2 limes vinegar or lime, to finish
• to serve banana leaf, to serve

Method

1. Boil peeled, large-cut yuca with garlic and salt until tender.
2. Drain and cool the yuca, remove the central fibrous vein, then portion it.
3. Dress raw cabbage with vinegar, tomato, onion and chile to make the salad.
4. Layer the yuca on a banana leaf with the cabbage salad on top and chicharrón crowning it.
5. Finish with vinegar or lime.
6. Serve traditionally without cutlery.

Notes

Credited to María Luisa Cisneros Lacayo, known as "La Loca," in Granada in 1914, who is said to have named it after a medicinal tonic advertisement poster she saw.

No precise boiling time in minutes was found in credible sources, so this chapter gives the method rather than a false figure.

What a modern chef changes

Sous vide yuca, concentrated chicharrón

Method

1. Cook the yuca sous vide in its own salted, garlic-infused cooking liquid rather than a rolling boil, holding it at a precise temperature that renders it fully tender without the waterlogging a hard boil risks.
2. Dehydrate a portion of the chicharrón trim and grind it in a spice grinder into a seasoning dust to finish the dish, a genuine concentration of the pork rather than a garnish for its own sake.
3. Finish the yuca briefly under the Big Green Egg's direct heat for real char on the cut faces before assembly, echoing the same live-fire logic running through this whole volume's elevations.