The Andes · Volume 46, The Two Milks, the Azotea and the Covered Pot
Viche manabita
Crucita and Manabí
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour 15
- Researched
- Researched from 67 sources in the brief
A thick soup of yuca, plantain, sweet potato, maize and beans, thickened with peanut, with albacore and shrimp added at the end: the representative dish of Crucita in the 2018 heritage dossier. The quantities are Dixon Briones's, chef of the Monté restaurant at the Hotel Oro Verde in Portoviejo, published by El Universo: a Manabí restaurant chef, not a rural cocinera, and the 2018 reporting does not name the dossier's rural cooks. The plantain and peanut dumplings that recipe pages put in the pot are sourced to those pages only and are not here.
As tradition built it
Serves 8. About 1 hour 15 minutes.
Ingredients
- 800g albacore, in cubes
- 400g shrimp
- 3 medium yucas
- 2 green plantains, one grated
- 2 large ripe plantains
- 2 small sweet potatoes, one grated
- 2 ears of tender yellow maize
- 300g beans
- 200g mixed vegetables
- 250g peanut paste
- 480ml (2 cups) whole milk or coconut milk
- 200g tomato
- 200g white onion
- 2 pearl onions
- 50ml achiote oil
- 50ml lemon juice
- 5g coriander, or basil, to finish
- 2.5 litres hot water or fish stock
- to taste garlic
- to taste oregano
- to taste cumin
- to taste black pepper
- to taste salt
Method
- Marinate the fish with salt, pepper and lemon juice 15 minutes in the fridge.
- Make a refrito of the pearl onion, garlic, pepper and white onion in the achiote oil; add the tomato blended, the cumin and oregano, and cook it down.
- Add the hot water or stock, the maize, yuca, plantains, beans and vegetables, with the small sweet potatoes, one grated, and the grated green plantain as thickeners, and simmer 25 to 30 minutes until tender.
- Blend the peanut paste with the milk and add it gradually over a low to medium heat for 15 minutes.
- Add the albacore for 8 to 10 minutes and the shrimp for 5.
- Rest, covered, 5 minutes, and finish with coriander or basil.
What a modern chef changes
The peanut toasted, the fish held back
Rung 5
Method
- Toast raw peanuts and grind them to a paste in the blender yourself, which is what the stone did; the shop paste is sweet and already old.
- Temper the peanut milk with a ladle of hot broth before it goes in, so it does not split.
- Add the fish at the table in a wide bowl with the soup poured over it at the boil: 800 grams in cubes cooks in the time the bowl takes to reach the eater.
- Finish with sal prieta over the top.