Puerto Rican Cuisine
Today is a yummy day! I get to talk about Puerto Rican cuisine! We indulge here in lots of seafood, fried foods, and sweet desserts. I hope you’ve eaten already because I’ll just make you hungry if you’ve haven’t. So just watch out for the visuals…I warned ya! LOL
Where to start off here? The basics, of course. We Puerto Ricans indulge in LOTS of coffee in the morning to begin with. We like our coffee strong and with little milk because it dulls up the coffee’s taste. We like our oatmeal, cereal, and things like that. Breakfast-wise I don’t think there’s much of a difference – we like muffins, bagels, cereal, and etc. But when we get to lunch and dinner is when things actually get interesting!
At the beach there are dozens of kiosks that sell bacalaitos (crunchy cod fritters), empanadillas (crescent-shaped turnovers filled with lobster, crab, conch, or beef). There’s also alcapurrias (fried fritters that may be stuffed with crab, beef, or just anything really) and arepas (another fritter that is cut open like an oyster shell and stuffed with whatever seafood pleases you). We drink coconut water (which is SO good), water, Coke, but I prefer water. I told ya we indulged in fried stuff. LOL.
Bacalaitos (photo by Ramón Morales)
Empanadillas (photo via Nugget Market)
Alcapurrias (photo via Eating In Translation)
Arepa (photo via Caracas Arepa Bar)
We are true rice lovers here on the island. We make rice with beans, chicken, crab, etc. etc. The famous one? Rice with pigeon peas. That’s just a classic here! This goes along perfectly with pasteles (green banana dough, stuffed meat pastries). These pasteles don’t necessarily have to be made with green banana dough, they can also be made with yucca. What else do we love? Plantains! We can make those crunchy tostones (fried plantain disks), or even mofongo (plantains mashed with garlic and other seasonings, and can even have shrimp, chicken or anything you want mixed in there!). I’m not very fond of tostones. People here also love their pork as well as beef steak – we just love meat here. Not many vegans here. LOL.
Tostones (photo via Isla Culebra)
Mofongo (photo by Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times)
You know what the best part is? Desserts! Doesn’t get any sweeter than this. Here we love flan - it’s just great! My grandmother makes them in all different flavors: orange, coffee, cheese, vanilla, and many many others. Tres leches rocks anyone’s tastebuds (sponge cake in three milks). It’s just so sweet! One of the most awesomely fun to eat is called tierrita (made with ground Oreos and creme textured vanilla thingie inside). This dessert is served as if it were a plant in a pot with a little flower because the Oreos look like dirt. LOL. There’s tembleque (coconut custard) and many many more. I’ll show you dessert pictures – that’s better than writing, right? LOL.
Flan
Tres leches
Tierrita (photo via Fruttadi)
Tembleque (photo via Fruttadi)
Hope you liked learning a little about food here. Have a lovely day!
Love,
Jenny
It’s always fun to learn new things!
Kathy
July 12, 2009My cousin and I saw these photos and we were like, “Dude…we need to go to Puerto Rico.” lol.
I have tried arepas though, from this really popular restaurant called Caracas. I forgot the name of the thing I had, but it was good. The arepas part (the dough) wasn’t as heavy as I thought it would be. I think they were Venezuelan style though. I’m assuming Puerto Rican arepas are a little different.
I’ve also had empanadas from Argentina. There’s this one place we went to in Buenos Aires (it was in the boonies of Buenos Aires…kinda out of the way) called La Cupertina. Omigosh…heaven in a pastry shell. I should post pics of them on my tumblr. Meeeeeeeemoriiiiiieeeeees…
Oh! And flan! I love flan!
Awesome post Jenipher!