The Caribbean · Volume 12, The Sofrito, the Libreta and the Ninety Miles to Miami
Rollitos de tasajo
Camagüey
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 106 sources in the brief
Rollitos de tasajo are salted dried beef, softened, shredded and cooked in salsa criolla with dry wine, rolled up in casabe that has been wetted with salt water, coated in flour and egg, and fried until golden. Fried boniato goes with them. Camagüey says they were the favourite of the poet Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, born there in 1814; the local historian Héctor Juárez Figueredo told the story as "se dice", it is said, and so do we.
The quantities are the Asociación Culinaria de Camagüey's, from Yudeini Pérez Mauriño's unpublished book. Island clock. The tasajo is prepared by the book's own method for tasajo a la camagüeyana. Juárez Figueredo, writing on the province's traditional cooking, gives the same dish with the tasajo diced, not shredded, and coated in breadcrumbs or ground crackers and egg.
As tradition built it
Makes about 25 rolls. The tasajo is soaked the night before.
Ingredients
- 725g tasajo, salted dried beef
- 116g fat, lard, for the sauté
- 580g salsa criolla, as for the montería
- 87g vino seco, Cuban dry cooking wine
- 870g casabe
- as needed salted water, to wet the casabe
- 145g plain flour, sifted
- 10 eggs, beaten
- for frying lard
- to serve boniato, fried
Method
- Soak the tasajo in water for 12 hours. Boil it for 1 hour, change the water, and boil it another hour until soft. Drain, let it cool, pound it with a mallet and shred it.
- Sauté the shredded tasajo in a little of the fat, add the salsa criolla, and finish with the vino seco.
- Wet the casabe with salted water so it will roll.
- Lay about 29g of tasajo on each piece of casabe and roll it up.
- Pass each roll through the plain flour and then the beaten eggs.
- Fry the rolls in hot lard until golden, and serve them with fried boniato.
Notes
The book gives the filling as one onza a roll, which is 29g by its own table.
What a modern chef changes
The tasajo rehydrated on purpose, and the casabe kept crisp
Rung 03
Method
- Taste the soaking water before you boil. Rung 03: tasajo gives back what drying concentrated, and a second soak for a saltier piece is the difference between seasoned and cured.
- Keep the boiling liquid from the second boil and loosen the salsa criolla with it, so the filling tastes of beef.
- Wet the casabe only just enough to roll, a brush of salted water, not a dip. The less it drinks, the crisper the fried shell.
- Fry at a steady temperature, in small batches, so the egg coat sets before the casabe softens inside it.