The Caribbean · Volume 14, The First Free Kitchen in the Americas
Legim
Haiti
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Hands on 2 hours 40 · Waiting 45 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Legim
Serves 8. About 2 hours 40 minutes, plus 45 minutes marinating.
Ingredients
- 1kg lean beef, diced (or chicken, goat, pork, or fish and crab)
- 1 aubergine
- 1 chayote (militon)
- 2, cut into 3cm cubes green peppers
- 1 large head, cut into 3cm cubes cabbage
- 600g lima beans
- 350g green beans
- 3, sliced carrots
- 280g spinach (10oz) and 1 bunch watercress, chopped spinach and watercress
- 3 scallions, 3 garlic cloves, 3 tbsp parsley green onions, garlic, parsley
- 4 limes, juiced
- 1 tbsp vinegar
- 120ml tomato concentrate
- 5 beef bouillon cubes
- 110ml oil
Method
- Marinate the beef roughly 45 minutes in lime juice and a blended green paste of the green onions, garlic and parsley.
- Simmer the beef with the tomato concentrate for roughly 2 hours, until tender.
- Add the prepared vegetables, the aubergine, chayote, green peppers, cabbage, lima beans, green beans, carrots, spinach and watercress, cover and simmer a further 20 minutes.
What a modern chef changes
Vegetables Puréed, Meat Cooked Separately
Rungs 1 and 6
Method
- Cook the beef sous vide to full, fall-apart tenderness on its own timeline, rather than the roughly two-hour stovetop simmer the tradition uses, which risks unevenness in a larger cut. Rung 6.
- Blend and pass a portion of the cooked vegetables through a chinois for a genuinely silky purée base, folding the remaining vegetables back in whole for texture, rather than the uniformly mashed result a long stovetop simmer gives.