Posts Tagged With: scuba gear

Cuban Entree

ROPA VIEJA

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds flank steak
½ teaspoon salt
1 Roma tomato (1 additional later)
1 large onion
1 green bell pepper
3 garlic cloves
1 Roma tomato
3 tablespoons olive oil
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ cup red wine

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 2 hours 15 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add flank steak, and salt to large pot. Add enough water to cover steak with 2″ to spare. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 2 hours or until steak shreds easily. Keep adding water as necessary to keep steak covered. Remove steak. Reserve 1 cup of the water from the pot. Shred the beef using two forks.

While steak simmers, puree 1 Roma tomato. Seed bell pepper. Mince onion. Dice bell pepper, garlic cloves, and 1 Roma tomato. Add oil, onion, and bell pepper to skillet. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion and bell pepper soften. Stir frequently. Add pepper, garlic, pureed tomato, diced tomato. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add shredded steak. Add wine and 1 cup water reserved from boiling the steak. Continue simmering at low-medium heat for 8 minutes or until well blended. Stir occasionally.

TIDBITS

1) Most of today’s younger folks have no idea how difficult it is to make ropa viejas, assuming incorrectly that it just shows up on their dinner plates. Nooo! It’s far more complicated than that. The feral flank steak only inhabits certain supermarkets. You’ll need to go online and hire a reputable safari guide if you wish to bring down this cut of meat.

3) And goodness sake, respect the defenses your ingredients have built up after years of human contact. The vicious onion will make your eyes hurt when you slice it. You hurt it. It hurts you. Best way to cut onions is under water. Do you have good scuba gear? The tomato stains your shirts whenever you cut it. This is a reflex action on its part, no thinking is involved. The only known defense against an enraged tomato is to wear red colored shirts.

3) Some ingredients are our friends, though. The friendly garlic bulb wards off blood-sucking vampires, which is good. Do your research. Pick ingredients wisely and be on guard.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.