Tacacho con cecina

As tradition built it

Tacacho con cecina

Serves 4 . 1 hour

Ingredients

An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.

• 10, green green plantain, roasted over charcoal or fried over low to medium heat
• 4 tbsp lard, hot
• 250g fried pork chicharrón
• to taste salt, to taste

Cecina

• pork leg or loin, cut into strips
• salt
• as available regional wood, for smoking, chosen not to bitter the meat

To serve

• 3 chorizo, often, alongside
• 2, peeled and diced cocona, for the dipping sauce
• 1 small, finely chopped onion, for the dipping sauce
• sweet chilli, for the dipping sauce
• 2 tbsp, chopped cilantro, for the dipping sauce
• 3, seedless ají charapita, for the dipping sauce

Method

1. Roast green plantain over charcoal, or fry over low to medium heat, until fully cooked through.
2. Mash the plantain, traditionally with a wooden mallet, while still hot, working in hot lard and fried pork chicharrón and salt to taste.
3. Knead until integrated and shape into balls.

Cecina

4. Salt and rest strips of pork leg or loin.
5. Smoke slowly over regional wood chosen not to bitter the meat, until dark reddish, firm outside and juicy within.

To serve

6. Serve two balls of tacacho with cecina and, often, a chorizo alongside, dressed with a cocona, onion, sweet chilli, cilantro and ají charapita dipping sauce.

Notes

No Loreto-sourced, quantified recipe for the pork cecina itself could be found in this research, only generalist synthesis; the salting time and wood choice above should be read as indicative rather than verified against a named Loreto source.

This cecina is Amazonian pork, not the Andean beef cecina described elsewhere in the atlas.

What a modern chef changes

Home-cured cecina, dehydrated chicharrón dust

Rung 03, 04

Method

1. Salt and rest thin-cut pork strips, dry them in a dehydrator to control moisture precisely, then cold-smoke over fruitwood in a Big Green Egg run low and long, a genuinely closer route to the Amazonian original than anything currently buyable in the UK.
2. Pass the finished cocona dipping sauce through a chinois for a properly smooth, seedless finish.
3. Pound the roasted plantain together with the lard and chicharrón while both are still hot, exactly as tradition demands, but finish one portion with dehydrated, ground chicharrón dust from the spice grinder folded through at the very end, for a genuine crunch the standard mash does not carry.