The Andes · Volume 46, The Two Milks, the Azotea and the Covered Pot
Pusandao
Tumaco, with the Nariño sierra
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 67 sources in the brief
Nitre-cured pork from the mountains cooked with hen, potato and plantain, and a hard egg served with each portion: the dish of Sundays on the El Morro beach. "El plato emblemático de los tumaqueños sigue siendo el pusandao de carne serrana," the Ministry says: the sierra's cured pork, which the serranos carried in their saddlebags from Túquerres, with the coast's hen and plantain, so it "tiene influencia tanto del Pacífico como de la sierra" (carries the influence of both the Pacific and the sierra). The carne serrana was once lamb and once buried in clay; the secret still is the nitre cure. The Ministry prints an Indigenous legend of three princesses in coconut shells and does not say whose it is, and neither do we. Rosaura Carolina Ruiz Quiñones, eighty four, seamstress and healer, learned it from her mother Cleofé Quiñones Ortiz. The recipe is a Tumaco cook's, for ten; the book credits it between two cooks and we name neither. The water and the herbs are unmeasured.
As tradition built it
Serves 10.
Ingredients
- 1kg carne serrana, nitre-cured pork, or a salt-cured pork
- 1kg chicken, in pieces, washed with lime
- 1kg potatoes, in their skins, washed
- 5 plantains, cut in lengths
- 10 eggs
- 240ml (1 cup) aliños, finely chopped: ají dulce, garlic, cebolla larga and onion
- as available cilantro, in the herb bundle
- as available chiyangua, in the herb bundle
- as available chirarán, in the herb bundle
- for garnish cilantro, chopped, to finish
- to cover water
- as needed salt, only if the meat needs it
Method
- Wash the serrana and desalt it overnight in water, changing the water once.
- Put a pot of water on the fire with the aliños, the pork and the herb bundle.
- Add the plantain. When it is releasing its starch, add the potatoes and the chicken.
- Cook on a low heat to the thickness the house likes, with salt only if the meat needs it.
- Boil the eggs hard apart. At the end lift out the herb bundle, add the chopped cilantro, and leave 10 minutes off the heat.
- Serve each portion with a peeled hard egg.
What a modern chef changes
The cure respected, the pot staged
Rungs 4 and 6
Method
- Taste the desalting water at intervals; the pork is ready when the water is no saltier than the sea, and the pot then takes no salt at all.
- Cook the pork and plantain 40 minutes before the chicken goes in, and the potatoes with the chicken for 30; the three are done together.
- Soft boil the eggs, 7 minutes, and peel them into the hot broth at the table.
- Serve on a beach if there is one.