Your Favorite Hispanic Cuisine
I have to cook for some friends tomorrow night and am looking for some ideas. I was thinking a themed dinner might be best. Any suggestions? And while I am at it, What is your favorite Hispanic dish?
6 Answers
Pernil y pasteles de Puerto Rico.
Can anyone help with the word "pasteles"? I know that "pastel" means cake, but it also refers to a Puerto Rican dish made with (among other things) pork, olives, and yuca mashed up into a paste-like substance, rapped in a banana leaf, and boiled.
I have difficulty finding it (outside of my Grandmother's house), because every time I ask for it, I am heard to want cake. Is there another name for the dish that I am thinking of?
I love gallo pinto. A dish from Costa Rica, and very simple. You make rice and black beans. Next you fry them together with lime juice, cilantro,and very thinly chopped red pepper, all to taste. It is called the "painted rooster" because of the colors 
Happy eating. Also, fry up some yuca (I am not sure if I spelled that correctly, but it is NOT yucca!) with that!! It is very similar to a potato.
Chuletas guisadas con arroz y tostones!
Stewed porkchops with rice and fried platinos!
This was my experience eating a Colombian dish called Bandeja Paisa
I chose a restaurant in Cucuta delightfully named "La Cucharra Engrasada". Surprisingly, nearly all the restaurants in this small town are of a similar style and nomenclature. Cucuta, like most small towns in Colombia, has taken a stand against the slick sophistication of Bogotá. On entering the restaurant, there are no smarmy maitre d´s to fawn over you with an offer of a courtesy aperitif. Here you are left to enter the establishment, savor the lingering aroma of the many meals that have been prepared there over the last month, find your own table and sit and contemplate the dining experience that inevitably follows. After allowing you a suitable period of approximately 10-15 minutes, enough time for your gastric juices to be truly working, your waitress will appear at your table. In my case, this was a beauty of about 18 years, dressed in the standard faded T-shirt and patch-bleached, appallingly tight jeans, which I must say, tends to distract a little from the coming meal. With her slightly imperfect complexion and a huge expanse of a rather large, tattooed, bare midriff, she greeted me with a smile and took my order. After 20 minutes and a Pepsi "au naturel" (warm and drunk out of the bottle) my Bandeja Paisa arrived, complete with two trained houseflies that hovered over and around the plate during the whole meal. As expected, my Bandeja Paisa was huge in proportion and a feast for the eyes of any blind man. Without even tasting, I could see that the first ingredient in Colombian cuisine was there in abundance - grease. I loved the plate decoration. Instead of a rose fashioned out of the peel of a tomato, I had a miniature castle made from a two-inch block of congealed meat fat with four dried meat turrets. The waitress (she was called Leidy, after Lady Di?) informed me it was called Chicharrón and was indeed edible. The beans were large and although not a touch on the Cassoulets I’d eaten in France, had a certain something about them. The rice, a sheer delight. So as not to detract from other parts of the dish, it was made simply, without any flavor whatsoever (not even salt, ingredient number two in Colombia). Molded using a coffee cup, the chef had had the brilliant idea of topping the rice with just a hint of sugar and a tracing of moist coffee powder. The chorizo was a disappointment. With its natural salt content increased by the salt that should have been in the rice, it was inedible. I tried the minced meat and was heartened to taste again (ingredient number three) the overpowering coriander. Erring on the side of caution, I ate only a forkful as Cucuta has a very hot climate and meat re-heated more than five or six times does tend to go off. I would have preferred my chopped tomato and onion salad to have been served cold but instead, it was at room temperature - approximately 90ºF. A touch of genius with the avocado! Defying conventional wisdom, the chef had used the other parts that most people throw away. Decorating my plate were six small pieces of avocado each with its little black spot. Plantain - no comment. This is one food item I refuse to eat. All in all, a memorable meal. Even at a cost of just 6.000 pesos (US$3), I think I will be able to resist repeating the experience for another twenty years. After just 18 hours, the meal is still repeating on me.
A scrumptious avocado, chopped coarsely and seasoned with only salt, pepper, and the juice of a fresh lime.
Sancocho de pescado con leche de coco, empanadas con ají y arepas, algunas de las "ricuras" que comemos en Colombia.
