The Caribbean · Volume 12, The Sofrito, the Libreta and the Ninety Miles to Miami
Arroz Puerto Príncipe
Camagüey city
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 106 sources in the brief
Arroz Puerto Príncipe is beef, rice, half ripe plantain and calabaza cooked in one cazuela, named for Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe, the colonial name of Camagüey. The provincial Culinary Association calls it the most typical dish of the province, above all in the city, and supposes, in its own words "se presume", that it was the food of the poorest, because plantain and calabaza grow all year and Spanish cooking ruled the richer tables.
The quantities are the Asociación Culinaria de Camagüey's, from Yudeini Pérez Mauriño's unpublished book. Island clock. No second source gives the dish under this name. The plantain line in the book is printed as 2 onzas and 580g, which do not agree; Cubahora reads it as two plantains. The grams are given here.
As tradition built it
A Camagüey cazuela of beef, rice, plantain and calabaza.
Ingredients
- 870g beef, a second cut, in 4cm pieces
- 70g salt
- 1g ground black pepper
- 87g fat, lard
- 20g garlic
- 130g onion
- 70g ají, Cuban sweet pepper
- 80g tomato
- 87g tomato paste
- 1 bay leaf
- 2050ml chicken stock
- 580g plátano pintón, half ripe plantain, in 2cm pieces
- 580g calabaza
- 725g rice
- 145g vino seco, Cuban dry cooking wine
- for garnish pimientos morrones
- for garnish petit pois
- for garnish parsley
Method
- Season the beef with some of the salt and the ground black pepper.
- Brown the beef in the fat in a cazuela, then add the garlic, the onion, the ají, the tomato, the tomato paste and the bay leaf.
- Pour in the chicken stock and simmer until the beef is tender. Taste for salt.
- Add the plátano pintón and the calabaza and leave them about 8 minutes.
- Add the rice and cook it, watching it, until it is done.
- Take it off the heat, perfume it with the vino seco, and garnish with pimientos morrones, petit pois and parsley.
Notes
The book's method does not say when the calabaza goes in; Cubahora's republication adds it with the plantain, and so does this one.
What a modern chef changes
The rice measured against the liquid left, and the plantain kept whole
Rung 01, 04
Method
- Build the sofrito before the stock: onion, ají and garlic softened in the fat after the beef browns, the tomato and paste cooked until they darken. Rung 01.
- Measure what is left of the stock when the beef is tender, and bring it to the volume the rice needs before the rice goes in. Rung 04: the rice drinks the pot, so the pot must hold what the rice can drink.
- Cut the plantain larger and add it with the rice if your plantain is riper, so it holds its shape and does not melt into the grain.
- Rest it covered, off the heat, before the wine, so the grain finishes in its own steam.