Puerto Rico

Drinking basil lemonade (!) in a pescatarian restaurant called Verde Mesa in Old San Juan

It's been nearly two-week hiatus from this blog because I was travelling in Puerto Rico with my partner, Julie! We had a really wonderful time. We stayed in San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, for most of the time. It's a great travel destination because it has both cultural and outdoors things to do, as well as being affordable. We saw old Spanish forts, walked through rainforests, visited museums, swam at beautiful beaches, and met kind people. Most importantly, at least in the context of this blog, we ate delicious food and drank delicious drinks. I think you would have to be doing something very wrong if you went to Puerto Rico and didn't eat delicious food.

Traditional Puerto Rican cuisine involves ingredients like rice and beans, plantains, fish, pork, yucca, bread fruit, and bananas. We had many excellent meals which involved one or more of those elements. One excellent dish we tried, called mofongo, is unique to Puerto Rico. Mofongo is made by frying green plantain and then mashing it with a wooden mortar and pestle with garlic, broth, salt, and other ingredients. The mash, which is like thick mashed potatoes in consistency, is then shaped into a ball or bowl, and then optionally a meat or vegetable stew can be poured over the mofongo.

Wikipedia has an informative article about the traditional Puerto Rican dish, mofongo.

This post is basically a reminder to myself that I'd like to try making my own vegan mofongo in the near future. If you'd like to try making your own mofongo, here are a few recipes that might work. Vegetable broth should be fine as a substitute for meat broth.

-This recipe has pork, but it seems like it could easily be omitted.
-This recipe explains that Dominicans also enjoy mofongo.
-A step-by-step guide with photos.

If you want to serve your mofongo with stew, here are some vegetarian Caribbean stew recipes, none of which I've tried.

-Puerto Rican stewed beans
 -Vegetarian sancocho (root vegetable stew, usually includes beef or chicken)
-Dominican stewed cabbage
-Puerto Rican-inspired stewed stewed tofu

Please let me know if you try any of these and how it turned out!

Creamy mushroom-Guinness ragout

This is the kind of recipe where when I taste it I think to myself in my humble way, "Gee, Shaun. You might just be a genius." The flavour is rich and complex and it's a stick-to-your-bones sort of meal. I highly recommend you try it. It's the best thing I've made in a while!

I served mine over some pan-fried store-bought polenta. If you're more ambitious than I am you could make your own polenta . It could also be good over pasta, or with bread or potatoes on the side.

Depending if you're vegetarian or how strict a vegetarian you are, you might not want to use Guinness. Or maybe you might just prefer another type of beer. I'm sure another type of dark beer would work just as well as Guinness in this recipe. I personally don't even like Guinness that much, but I had some left over from making Chocolate Covered Katie's Double Chocolate Guinness Brownies. The brownies, incidentally, are delicious and I highly recommend them. They're very moist and rich. I think this ragout would be good, but would also have quite a different flavour, if you used red or white wine in place of the beer.

Chop that garlic!

The onions sauteing with the dried herbs.

The mushroom-onion-beer mixture is simmering happily.

It tastes as deliciously creamy as it looks!

Recipe: Creamy mushroom-Guinness ragout
Serves 3-4 people

Ingredients:
-2 cups chopped white mushrooms
-1 chopped large yellow onion
-1 cup of firm tofu, cut into 1 cm cubes
-1/2 cup raw cashews soaked overnight in 1/2 cup water
-3 minced garlic cloves
-1 tbs soy sauce
-3 tbs olive oil
-1 cup Guinness beer (or other dark beer)
-1 tbs cornstarch
-1 tsp dried sage
-1 tsp dried rosemary
-salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat 2 tbs olive oil in a large pan. Once it is hot add the onion. Add the sage and rosemary. Saute the onion until it is translucent  (5-10 minutes).

2. Add the garlic, mushrooms, and soy sauce to the pan. Allow the mushrooms to cook until they are soft and tender (5-10 min).

3. Add the Guinness beer and 1 cup of water.

4. Allow the Guinness and mushroom mixture to reduce while heating the remaining 1 tbs of olive oil in another pan. Fry the tofu cubes in the oil until they are lightly browned (10 min).

5. Add the browned tofu into the Guinness and mushroom mixture and stir together.

6. Blend together the soaked cashews with their soaking water, using a high-speed blender or immersion blender, until the mixture is smooth and creamy. This is the "cashew cream". Mix the cream into the ragout.

7. Remove about 1/2 cup of the liquid of the ragout and place in a bowl. Add the cornstarch to the liquid and mix thoroughly. Add the cornstarch mixture back into the ragout and stir thoroughly and immediately. This will thicken the liquid of the ragout.

8. Taste and adjust for salt and pepper. Enjoy!

I literally licked my plate clean because I'm a disgusting human being.