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The Caribbean · Volume 45, The Arepa Coast, the Hallaca and the Titoté

Arroz con coco titoté

Cartagena and the coast

Arroz con coco titoté, rice cooked in coconut milk over the browned coconut solids and oil, with sugar and raisins: a mound of pale brown glossy rice flecked with dark brown fried coconut solids and plump raisins on a round plate, a whole fried fish and three golden patacones beside it.

Illustration

Time
1 hour 20

Chef Alejo, of Foodies Colombia, gave this recipe in a demonstration for the Instituto de Patrimonio y Cultura de Cartagena de Indias, written up by Natalie Berdugo Cañón for Región Caribe in December 2020, and the amounts and the times are his. The Tolú writer who insists that the real coconut rice is a savoury sofrito of garlic and ají dulce is right that both exist. This is the sweet one, and the "it is believed to be from Cartagena" of the recipe sites stays a belief.

As tradition built it

Serves 6. About 1 hour 20 minutes, and up to 3 hours if the titoté takes its time.

Ingredients

Method

  1. Squeeze the grated coconut with a little hot water for a first, thick milk, about 240ml. Squeeze it again with more water for a second, thin milk, about 480ml.
  2. Put the first milk and the sugar into a cold pot, bring it to a medium low heat and cook, stirring now and then, until the liquid has gone, the solids are brown and the oil has separated. Twenty minutes for this quantity; two hours for a big pot.
  3. Add the second milk, bring it to the boil, and lower the heat to the lowest setting.
  4. Add the rice, cover, and cook about 40 minutes without stirring, until the rice is tender and the liquid gone.
  5. Add the raisins at the end and fork them through; or add them with the rice, for softer fruit.

What a modern chef changes

The titoté made to a colour, the rice steamed to the grain

Rung 2

Method

  1. Weigh the first milk and reduce it in a wide pan, not a deep one; it browns in a third of the time and evenly.
  2. Stop the titoté at the colour of dark toast, measured against a piece of it on a white plate; a shade past that is bitter.
  3. Toast the rice in the titoté oil for a minute before the second milk goes in, so each grain is coated.
  4. Finish the rice off the heat under a cloth for 10 minutes, and serve it beside fried fish and patacones, which the coast does.
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