The Caribbean · Volume 12, The Sofrito, the Libreta and the Ninety Miles to Miami
Buñuelos de Nochebuena
Cuba
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Buñuelos de Nochebuena
Christmas Eve fritters, about 30 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 lb yuca
- 1/2 lb boniato
- 1/2 lb malanga
- 1 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp sugar, per pot
- 1 star anise, per pot
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup flour
Syrup
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup water
- 2 star anise
- 1 cinnamon stick
Method
- Boil the yuca, boniato and malanga separately, each with salt, a tablespoon of sugar and a star anise in the pot.
- Mash each to a fine purée and combine with egg and flour.
- Knead the dough and traditionally shape it into a figure of eight.
- Deep-fry until golden.
- Bathe in a light syrup of sugar, water, star anise and a cinnamon stick.
What a modern chef changes
Separate sous vide tubers, chinois dough, sous vide syrup
Method
- Cook each of the three tubers sous vide separately, at the specific temperature that best suits its own starch, rather than boiling all three to a single compromise doneness.
- Pass the combined purée through the chinois for a genuinely silky dough with none of the fibrous strands the coarser tubers, malanga especially, can otherwise leave in the finished fritter.
- Dehydrate a small portion of the purée separately and fold it back in to firm the dough's consistency precisely, rather than relying on flour alone to correct a too-wet mix.
- Reduce the finishing syrup with the star anise and cinnamon steeped in via sous vide at a controlled low simmer, for a clearer, more evenly infused syrup than an open reduction gives.