It has been a very cold few days here in Minnesota. Like everything is iced over on the ground, makes for a fun drive around.
Are you keeping to your new year resolutions or have you broken it already? Its tough eating healthy! I mean there is only so much lettuce I can eat. And really who likes chicken boob? Chicken boob is an acquired taste if. you ask me.
Over the Christmas holiday I did this super delicious recipe for 196 flavors, Yuca con chicharron. Simply put in English, yuca with fried pigs skin or pork belly. If you have never had chicharron, then you maybe missing an integral part of your diet. if you have never had yuca or cassava as it is more commonly known in the Caribbean then where have you been?
There is this dish in Trinidad called boil and fry cassava…OMG yum! You boil the cassava, until it is soft and mushy, then you fry it with onions, peppers and loads of creole butter and serve it with curry chicken.
Can you tell I have been eating healthy the last two weeks? Because everything sounds good to me right now!
Okay so for the yuca con chicharron, you can either fry the boiled yuca, which makes for one of the bets tasting fries you will ever eat or you can serve it simply boiled.
The chicharron is a bit more in debt and takes a bit of time. Word to the wise, the pork skin will pop, crackle and smash oil everywhere, so be very care full. A trick to this is to boil it first until it is very tender, cut it into pieces, add a teaspoon of corn starch to it then fry it.
Corn starch will make it extra crisp. Pork belly is hard to find sometimes, but most grocery will have fresh ham hock. Boil it in the same way, until it is falling off the bone, then cut and fry it.
Otherwise on your next trip to El Salvador, be sure to check out this at one of their local restaurants.
Head on over to 196 flavors, for this recipe and for a full explanation of how this recipe came about.
1 comment
Oh so lovely ! And yeah, it’s tough to eat completely healthy like your not eating anything at all. I’ve only eaten once a day all week on my own version of OMAD – One Meal A Day & Keto, only making and eating dinner.
That’s like a foodies nightmare only eating once a day and missing out on all the other food stuff. But I’m trying to stick to it. Down a few lbs is encouraging! But it don’t make for much cooking to say the least.
When I was in Peru recently for a while and I luv Peruvian Food it was realized that Peruvian’s love to eat Yuca! Especially boiled then fried Yuca or it seasoned in various fashion on frying. Often eating with various condiments that’s with ketchup no where in site (good) but with Chimi herb sauce and various Aji Peppers blends of sauce or Aji Huacatay (Huacatay – Black Mint). Huacatay herb is Da Bomb! But it only mainly grows in PeruI didn’t miss ketchup one bit eating lots of Yuca there. But they have a love of Yuca boiled and fry there in Peru. And they luv their numerous condiments on the table. It’s always interesting what you learn traveling and taking in other food culture. I plan to add it to my own. Needless to say I now own like 5 really good Peruvian cook books.
So thought it interesting you have a Yuca dish up. I know Pork Belly can easily be often found at Whole Foods Store and saw some last time recently I was army local Whole Foods.
All in all, I enjoy the globe trotting recipes or recipe takes from the Americas rather it seems.