Rice by any other name...

Arroz con Gandules

I have been working on this off and on the past week or so and having a full-time job has proved challenging to stay on schedule, but I will do the best I can to keep these coming on a weekly basis. I am still getting used to being in a restaurant again after a long break and am doing my best to adjust. Thanks for subscribing.

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One of the dishes I was thinking about putting on the menu is Arroz con Gandules, a dish that comes from Puerto Rico. I felt that sharing a bit of my own history and background is something customers relate to in a big way. Arroz con gandules is a celebratory dish always served at Christmas time but cooked throughout the year as well. My mother was from southern Illinois but my father was from Puerto Rico. He flew my mother down to Puerto Rico when they got married and my grandmother taught her how to make Puerto Rican food. She was a natural and quickly learned about sofrito, alcapurrias, pasteles, and arroz con gandules. I grew up eating all these dishes and thought nothing of it. A few newsletters ago I wrote about the first time I ever made tostones as well. Even though it did seem weird that none of my other friends ate these things I thought it totally normal that we ate pork shoulder ( pernil) arroz con gandules, tostones along with turkey, and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.

So I knew I wanted to feature this dish but I wanted to make it the way I would make it not necessarily the way my mom would make it. She would have used Goya sofrito, as well as Goya Sazón seasoning. I made my own sofrito ( bell peppers, garlic, onions, and tomatoes cooked very slowly into an almost paste like consistency. I made my own Sazon, combining ground cumin, coriander, dried oregano, annatto seed,salt and pepper. I ditched the garlic powder which is traditional and added more fresh garlic to the dish. I marinated the pork belly in the Sazon and vacuum sealed it to marinate for a day. I also bought dried gandules (pigeon peas) and cooked them myself, my mom would have used canned, which honestly is the way I would do it if I were cooking this at home. But in a professional setting I try to inject as much flavor as possible. I cooked the gandules with bacon, sofrito, cumin and dried oregano.

To make the rice I added butter (most people use lard, I didn’t have any but will in the future) to a stock pot and added the annatto seed to infuse into the fat. Then I strained the seeds out and added more sofrito and sazon and cooked it for a bit before adding the rice. At this point, it’s important to coat the rice in fat to give the rice its distinctive yellow color. Then I cooked the rice and the gandules together, using about a 2 to 1 ratio of rice to liquid. I’ve cooked a lot of rice so most of the time I can eyeball it but it depends on what kind of rice you use. Then I brought it to a boil and reduced it to a slow simmer covering it with a banana leaf. Once the rice develops “holes” in the rice and almost all of the liquid is gone I turn off the heat and leave it covered for about 20 minutes to continue cooking. I find this method makes for really even cooking.

The pork belly I cooked sous vide at 170 degrees for ten hours. I had never cooked pork belly sous vide but read that it produces a very tender mouth feel so I gave it a shot. I have to say, I ate some right out of the bag when it was ready and it was absolutely delicious. It melted in my mouth and came apart in my hands. I placed it between two sheet trays in the cooler and set a heavy can on top to weigh it down so it would become perfectly flat as it cooled.

Originally I wanted to make a Malta glaze. Malta is a carbonated malt soda drink hugely popular in Puerto Rico. It’s definitely an acquired taste but most Puerto Ricans love it. But getting it on a regular basis has proved to be an issue so I’m switching to a rum glaze. It still fits with the dish and it’s something I’ve done before.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the dish but it still needs a few more tweaks. I want a more pronounced pork flavor in the rice and beans and the glaze needs to be a bit more consistent. As with any dish once it’s on the menu the process doesn’t stop. I will get feedback from the staff and from customers and adjust as I go.

I also wanted to put dishes on the menu that not only taste good, reflect my history, but also are a bit easier for the cooks to execute on a nightly basis. We are understaffed like most restaurants are these days and it doesn’t make sense to put dishes on the menu that are overly complex and super labor intensive. The ingredients are also fairly easy to get even in this supply chain issue world we now live in.