The Caribbean · Volume 12, The Sofrito, the Libreta and the Ninety Miles to Miami
Matajíbaro
Camagüey
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 106 sources in the brief
Matajíbaro is plantain fried and then pounded: green and half ripe plantain fried golden, ground or pounded in a pilón with fried pork fat, chicharrones and garlic, and seasoned with salt and pepper. Camagüey's Culinary Association calls it, with ajiaco, the dish still served at home tables in the province, and says plainly that a matajíbaro or machuquillo of plantain purée with meat or chicharrones is made in many regions, and that none is the same as Camagüey's.
Santiago claims it too: the Santiago chef Jorge Méndez Rodríguez-Arencibia files matajíbaro under Santiago's regional cooking, and says it may be served shaped in balls. The quantities here are Camagüey's, from Yudeini Pérez Mauriño's unpublished book for the Culinary Association. Island clock. The pilón comes from CubaPLUS, whose version grinds the plantain or pounds it in one.
As tradition built it
A Camagüey home table dish.
Ingredients
- 1450g plantain, green and half ripe, cut thick as for chatinos
- 290g empella, pork leaf fat
- 399g chicharrones, or fried pork
- for frying lard
- 20g garlic
- 30g salt
- 1g ground pepper
Method
- Fry the empella and the chicharrones.
- Fry the plantain in lard until golden.
- Grind the plantain, the empella, the chicharrones and the garlic together, or pound them in a pilón.
- Mix it well and season with the salt and the ground pepper.
Notes
Nitza Villapol's Cocina Criolla, read in a Mexican reprint of the pre-1959 text, has no matajíbaro by name. Her machuquillo de plátano verde, page 140, is the cousin the Camagüey book means: pork rendered, plantain fried as tostones or chatinos and broken up, garlic fried in the pork fat, all turned together.
What a modern chef changes
The fat rendered for the frying, and the pound kept coarse
Method
- Render the empella slowly first and fry the plantain in its fat. The plantain then tastes of the pork it will be pounded with.
- Pound it in a mortar, not a processor, and stop while there are still pieces. A processor makes a paste; the pilón leaves the crunch of the chicharrón.
- Fry the garlic in the fat at the end and pour it over, so the garlic is cooked and not raw in the mash.
- Season at the table. Chicharrones carry their own salt, and the book's salt is for a large batch.