Cooking Lessons


I like food.  I like Puerto Rican food.  My friend Kezia also likes food.  And, being Puerto Rican, she knows how to cook Puerto Rican food.  So, a few weeks ago, we started a Thursday night tradition of a cooking lesson followed by a movie.  With any lucky, by the end of this semester, I’ll be able to make all my favorite foods without her watching over my shoulder to make sure I don’t screw up. 

For last night’s adventure (churrasco with yellow rice and tostones), I remembered to bring my camera so I could document each step of the process. 

It started with this array of ingredients.


First step was the rice.  We dumped some of the seasonings into a pot and heated them up, then added water, and when that got hot, we added the rice.



That cooked for a while, and meanwhile we set our meat to marinating and got started on our tostones.  Tostones, for those that don’t know, are fried green plantains.  We discovered when we got home that our plantains had ripened a little bit too much and turned yellow, so we ended up with something closer to maduras (fried yellow (ripe and sweet) plantains), but we still followed the process to make tostones. 

Step one: cut up the plantain.



Step two: fry those puppies. 



Step three: Smoosh them.

Step four: Fry them again!  (Healthy, right?) 




The last thing we made was churrasco, which in Puerto Rico always refers to skirt steak.  We marinated the meat in Kezia’s signature blend of flavors (vinegar, olive oil, pepper, Adobo, and garlic), then fried it up in a pan with some onions. 

All that resulted in this finished product.  Yum! 




Time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labor while watching a movie!  (This week: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief).  

Last week, we made mofongo, which is my absolute favorite Puerto Rican dish, made from mashed plantains with garlic and olive oil.  Since I didn’t post about it, here's a picture from that night too. 



I’m not sure what’s next on our list of things to learn…habichuelas and white rice, perhaps, and maybe meat seasoned a different way.  And I’m sure we’ll repeat things a few times so that I Inow I can make them without reminders from my teacher.  J  Hopefully by the time I’m home this summer, I’ll be whipping up mofongo and churrasco right and left.

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