Rondón

As tradition built it

Rondón

Serves 6. About 1 hour. Per Sicultura, Panama's government cultural information system; documented preparation location Finca 12, Changuinola, Bocas del Toro.

Ingredients

An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.

• 4 coconuts fresh coconut, grated and milked
• 6 leaves culantro
• 1 ají dulce
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 lb fillet, plus 1 head fish, sierra or urel recommended for their firm flesh, steamed or fried, including the head
• otoe
• 1 lb ñampí
• dashín
• 1 lb breadfruit
• banana
• 4 green plantain
• 1 lb cassava

Method

1. Grate and milk fresh coconut, and bring the milk to a boil with culantro, ají dulce and minced garlic.
2. Add the vegetables earlier in the cooking: otoe, ñampí, dashín, breadfruit, banana, green plantain and cassava, deliberately excluding yam, since rondón is already thick and yam would turn it into a purée rather than a proper soup.
3. Near the end of cooking, add the steamed or fried fish, sierra and urel recommended for their firm flesh, using the fish head for its own meat.

Notes

Vegetable quantities and the fish, coconut, culantro, ají dulce and garlic quantities are drawn from en.recetaspanama.com, since the Sicultura source the chapter otherwise relies on gives method and produce but no quantities; that source also lists yam, which this chapter deliberately excludes per Sicultura, so yam quantities were not carried across. Otoe, dashín and banana remain unquantified: no Panamanian source found in this or the prior research session gives a quantity for them.

What a modern chef changes

The coconut base built properly, the fish cooked apart

Rung 03

Method

1. Build the coconut base fresh, emulsified and strained, exactly as Rung 3 sets out, before the culantro, ají dulce and garlic go in, rather than starting from a tinned milk that can separate under a long simmer.
2. Cook the fish separately, briefly, and fold it in at the very end, protecting the delicate flesh from the long vegetable simmer the recipe otherwise calls for, and reserving the head separately to enrich the coconut stock itself before it ever meets the pot.
3. Purée a small portion of the cooked root vegetables in the blender and stir back through, thickening the broth further without adding yam, honouring the Sicultura source's explicit instruction that yam does not belong in this dish.