When I turned 21, my mom gave me the most incredible homemade gift of all time. She compiled ALL of our family recipes from both sides and put together the most epic, delicious, and beautiful cookbook I have ever seen. Then, during my senior year of college at the University of Delaware, I cooked and ate my way through it right alongside my roommates. If you ask me what my favorite recipe from the book is, I won’t have a straight answer because I truly love them all. But there are some that, in my family, are reserved for special occasions and/or the holiday season. I’m not sure if it’s to preserve the special feel to them or because these recipes tend to require a lot more work, but I recently decided to break the rules and make one for fun.
Penil, (pork shoulder,) arroz con gandules, the best rice in the world (not a direct translation, but it should be), and platanos, sweet plantains, is a meal from the Puerto Rican side of my family. I LOVE this dish whenever my mom makes it and it’ll take me some time to master it, but man is it worth it.
It’s hard not to enjoy a good pork shoulder. It is harder however, to make a good pork shoulder. Oddly enough, I’m not a HUGE fan of pork. What I do love is the crunchy skin. My family used to make fun of me when I would dip pork, and any other meat for that matter, in ketchup. Now they yell at me for picking off the skin and feeding the meat to my dogs. But, I don’t discriminate against any type of food so I attempted the pork anyway. It’s seasoned overnight with olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano and garlic both inside and out. It’s then placed in a roasting pan and cooked for 20 minutes per pound, in this case a little under three hours with occasional basting. Sounds easy I know but for some reason, my pork did not come out as juicy and tender as my mother’s usually does. Still tasty but just not the same. I blame the oven?
Arroz con gandules is actually translated to rice with pigeon peas (doesn’t best rice in the world sound better?). Shopping for the ingredients would have been difficult had my mom not answered the phone while I was in the supermarket, but once she told me how to find sofrito and gandules, the rest of the shopping was simple. When my family eats this at home there is usually a battle for the crispy layer on the bottom of the pot and there is ALWAYS late night snacking on the leftovers. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve caught my dad with his head in the refrigerator and never said anything only because I had every intention of doing the same thing.
I don’t have the recipe for the platanos in the cookbook my mother gave me. So I cheated. I bought them frozen and then just fried them. You can’t really mess something like that up so those came out great.
This post isn’t so much a recipe post as it is a story. As I was flipping through my cookbook (which I JUST recently unpacked even though I’ve been in this house for nearly a year), I could smell the pork roasting in my parents’ kitchen. I immediately went out to pick up ingredients.
Do you have any specific recipes that make you think of family? I’d love to hear about them in the comments!
Rebecca McKinney
I wanted to create this blog for a few reasons. First and foremost, to share tips, tricks, and knowledge about the food and beverage industry in general but also to help people see a different side of the restaurant world. Every restaurant has a totally unique culture and world within it. I want to help open people’s eyes to more than how fast the service is or how easy or hard it is to secure a reservation.
So, thanks for stopping by! I welcome your ideas, input, and feedback and hope you enjoy!
Eat well & travel often,
Becky McKinney
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