Flavors of Puerto Rico

Flavors of Puerto Rico

Puerto Rican cuisine has been experiencing a boom of sorts, with innovative, gourmet restaurants opening around the island. Today, more chefs and restaurateurs are developing menus in the line of a Nuevo Latino cuisine. Joyfully departing from traditional continental and Puerto Rican recipes, these chefs nevertheless include traditional ingredients and update old favorites. Standard meats like chicken, fish, and lamb are given an added zest by sauces made from such tropical fruits as tamarind, mango, or guava. Take your palate out for a few adventures. Puerto Rican cuisine may surprise and delight you with both new and old tastes.


Cocina Criolla


The origins of contemporary Puerto Rican cuisine can be traced to the Taíno people, who inhabited the island in the 15th century. Taíno staples still used today include yucca, peppers, and corn. The Taíno also are believed to have grown guava, pineapple, and soursop.


Cocina criolla—literally, the creole kitchen—is an aggregate of Caribbean cuisines, sharing basic ingredients common to Cuban, Dominican, and to some extent even Brazilian culinary traditions. Still, it has its own distinct flavorings.


When the Spaniards arrived on the island, they brought olives, eggplant, onion, garlic, rice, and cilantro. Wheat would not grow on the island, so yucca remained a staple, as did rice. Regional culinary specialties from Spain, such as paellas, came out of the Spanish-influenced kitchen. These specialties played an important role in the development of Puerto Rican recipes, recognizable today in such dishes as arroz con pollo. Lacking olive oil, early Puerto Ricans often used lard as a fat. African slaves brought by the Spanish from Guinea and the Gold Coast of Africa during the 16th century to toil in the sugar fields also left their marks on the Puerto Rican table. The slaves brought plantains, bananas, pigeon peas, okra, and yams. The Taíno used corn husks to wrap foods, but the Africans replaced them with plantain leaves. The African population developed a variety of coconut-based dishes and preferred frying foods to stewing them.


Local Seafood


Puerto Rico is home to an abundance of freshwater and saltwater fish, both native and introduced, and the island is readily associated with big-game fishing. Off the coast of Culebra, fishermen catch bonefish, tuna, blue and white marlin and dolphin fish, otherwise known as mahi-mahi. The island's more than twenty man-made lakes are stocked regularly with freshwater fish, and local restaurants take advantage of these fresh catches, offering inventive daily specials. Lunch and dinner generally start with appetizers, such as bacalaitos, (crunchy cod fritters) or sopón de pescado, a classic fish soup made with garlic and spices plus onions and tomatoes. Fried fish is also popular, served with mojo isleño, a sauce made with olives and olive oil, onions, pimientos, capers, tomato sauce, and vinegar. The seafood shacks of Joyuda are so well known for fresh fish that people come here from as far away as Ponce and San Juan. In Boquerón people line up at pushcarts where vendors sell oysters on the half shell. (Hot sauce is optional.) If you're in Rincón, the Horned Dorset Primavera has one of the most elegant eateries in the Caribbean.


Indigenous Fruits and Vegetables


Tropical fruits often wind up at the table in the form of delicious juices. A local favorite is pineapple juice from crops grown in the north of the island. Coconut, mango, papaya, lime, and tamarind are other local favorites. Puerto Rico is home to lesser-known fruits that are worth trying if you find them; these include the caimito (which is also called a star apple and has a mild, grapelike flavor), quenepa (also called a Spanish lime, which has yellow sweet-tart pulp surrounded by a tight, thin skin), and zapote (a plum-size fruit that tastes like a combination of peach, avocado, and vanilla). The Plaza del Mercado in the Santurce sector of San Juan is a good place to look for the unusual.


Spices


Puerto Rican dishes often feature pepper, lime rind, cinnamon, cloves, fresh ginger, garlic, and the juice of the sour orange. Two popular herb seasonings are cilantro (coriander) and oregano. These ingredients, along with small sweet peppers, are commonly used to flavor soups and meats. The conventional wisdom says that the real secret of the cocina criolla depends on the use of sofrito (a sauce that may include tomatoes, onion, garlic, peppers, and coriander), achiote (the inedible fruit of a small Caribbean shrub whose seeds are sometimes ground as a spice), lard, and the caldero (cooking pot).


Plantains and Mofongo


Plátanos, or plantains, are related to bananas but are larger and starchier. They are served mostly as side dishes and may be eaten green (as tostones, which are salty) or ripe (as amarillos, which are sweet). They can be fried, baked, boiled, or roasted and served either whole or in slices. Sometimes whole amarillos are served with cinnamon as a dessert. Pasteles, boiled plantain leaves wrapped around fillings, tamale-style, are a Christmas specialty but can be eaten anytime.

Of all the delicious plantain preparations, one of the tastiest is also the simplest-mofongo. Green plantains are mashed with a wooden pilón, mixed with garlic and other flavorings and fried in a pan. Served plain, it's often a side dish. But when it's stuffed with chicken, beef, or some other meat, mofongo becomes one of Puerto Rico's signature entrées.


In the center of the island it's often made with pork. On the coast, however, mofongo is almost always stuffed with fresh fish or shellfish. Some restaurants are even known for what they put in their plantains. A neon sign outside Tino's, one of a long line of seafood restaurants in Joyuda, touts its signature dish: an earthenware goblet overflowing with plantains and seafood.


Rice


Rice is omnipresent on the Puerto Rican plate. It can be served "white" with kidney beans, or prepared with gandules (pigeon peas) or garbanzos (chickpeas); most often rice is simply served with habichuelas (red beans). Whatever the case, the accompaniment for rice is almost always some kind of bean, always richly seasoned. Rice stuck to the pot, known as pegao, is the most highly prized, full of all the ingredients that have sunk to the bottom.


Rum


As you enjoy your piña colada—a cocktail served in nearly every bar on the island—lift your glass to Christopher Columbus. Although the explorer didn't invent the fruity cocktail, he did bring sugarcane to the Caribbean on his second voyage in 1493. Sugarcane is native to Southeast Asia, but it was cultivated in Spain at the time, and Columbus thought it would do well in the tropical "New World." Juan Ponce de Léon, the island's first governor, planted vast fields of the stuff. The first sugar mill was opened in 1524, leading to the distillation of what was then called brebaje. Although rum was first exported in 1897, it took a bit longer for it to become the massive industry it is today. The Bacardí family, after fleeing Cuba, set up shop near San Juan in 1959. Their company's product, lighter-bodied than those produced by most other distilleries, gained favor around the world. Today Puerto Rico produces more than 35 million gallons of rum a year. You might say it's the national drink.


On the Menu


Adobo: a seasoning made of salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and ground black pepper.


Aji-li-mojili: a dressing combining garlic and sweet, seeded chili peppers, flavored with vinegar, lime juice, salt, and olive oil.


Alcapurrias: banana croquettes stuffed with beef or pork.


Amarillos: fried ripe, yellow plantain slices.


Arepas: fried corn or bread cakes.


Batido: a tropical fruit-and-milk shake.


Bacalaítos: deep-fried codfish fritters.


Chimichurri: an herb sauce of finely chopped cilantro or parsley with garlic, lemon, and oil.


Empanadillas: turnovers, bigger than pastelillos, filled with beef, crabmeat, conch, or lobster.


Mofongo: a mix of plantains mashed with garlic, olive oil, and salt in a pilón, the traditional Puerto Rican mortar and pestle.


Mojo or Mojito Isleño: a sauce made of olives and olive oil, onions, pimientos, capers, tomato sauce, vinegar, garlic, and bay leaves.


Pasteles: corn or yucca stuffed with various fillings and wrapped in a plantain leaf.


Pastelillos: deep-fried cheese and meat turnovers; a popular fast-food snack.


Picadillo: spicy ground meat, which is used for stuffing or eaten with rice.


Pique: a condiment consisting of hot peppers soaked in vinegar, sometimes with garlic or other spices added.


Tembleque: a coconut custard, usually sprinkled with cinnamon or nutmeg.