Sol Food: Update

It's been about six months since we hit Sol Food in San Rafael, and quickly let me report that the music's still loud, the beans are the bomb, the plantains flash-fried and the letter from Angelo about the color scheme remains in its place on the menu box outside. It's not like no one sees it; queues still stretch out the door.

So it raises an interesting question: Who woulda thought that there would be enough of a market in Marin, of all places, for P-Rican bistec, pork, chicken and plantains? I don't believe it's simply the reasonable prices; San Rafaelers can spend more. (There also are no liquor sales, not even beer and wine, one of the solid profit centers of any eatery.) It must be the casual and welcoming environment -- you come in and order at counter and food comes and then you eat. You can bring kids and take half of your plate home. No big fuss, and that's refreshing.

Taking It From the Bottom

That didn't come out right. What I mean is that I want to reach around and work backwards from my li'l cheat sheet. I could write for about an hour about umami and hanging out with Gary Danko and his art collection and how I did not name-drop the blog. (I was working.) I could take another half-hour or maybe more and say how eye-opening it was to visit the piers at the end of Taylor Street, with dozens of seafood processors and distributors supplying ocean protein to who knows how many people and whether it's a good idea that we eat fish the way we do anyway. Better to dish about the puffed-up jerks in Marin.

I'm dying to get this off my chest: K and I run up to San Rafael's Sol Food to visit our friends Cecily, Jim and their 2-year-old mambo king Colin. (The kid likes salsa music, what can one say.) Business is booming: The corner cafe on 4th is still there, serving takeout like a house afire, and there's now another more-sitdown place a block down on 3rd. As we walk in to get our rice and beans on, I notice there's a letter in the menu box.

It says something along the lines of the following: "Mrs. Hernandez, nice to see that you decided to open a separate restaurant. I've enjoyed your food. But while the green color you've chosen for the exterior may be appropriate for Puerto Rico, it's not appropriate for Marin County. I will no longer patronize your business until you change your color palette. I also will ask my friends not to eat at your restaurant." Signed, "Angelo."

Meanwhile, the line's out the door for the bistec encebollado and plantains fried five ways. The place looks great, the music's hot, the food's on the money. Jim asks me if this is authentic. I say yes. Because it is. Sunday's special, which starts getting served at 4 pm, is arroz con gandules and pasteles.

As for you, Angelo, let me tell you what's appropriate for Puerto Rico: Vete pa'l carajo, comemierda.

Cocinando en San Carlos

With my folks at their place in the Peninsula and Kristen's folks out and about on day trips, I got a chance to be the true mensch and help my mom make the Puerto Rican food last Sunday afternoon. I swing down in the mean machine loaded with some goodies and in short order pull my shirt off, pop open a Bud Light and get busy as sous chef.

First I brown some ripe plantain rounds in butter, and when that's done add quite a bit of brown sugar and water. Then we spice with cinnamon and cloves, and once that reduces 20 minutes later, it's topped off with a cut-up green apple. Diabetics, beware the amarillitos con manzana.

While all this is going on, some very thin slices of pancetta (Primo Taglio from Safeway, awesome packing job) are sizzling in the bottom of a big Dutch oven. Those come out and seasoned parts of a bird are brought out of ziplock bags to get browned in batches. Then the sofrito goes in with a bit of tomato sauce. Then the rice (Uncle Ben's) cascades for its turn in the hot oil, and finally the bird and lots of water. An hour later or so, we have arroz con pollo.

With a little more pancetta and sofrito I start the base for the beans, which this time are just canned pintos from Safeway. Mom softens up some cubes of butternut squash in a separate pot and throws them in. After some requisite boiling, we have the usual debate on the salt. I defer to the expert.

Later I soften up some asparagus spears and run off the water. As Kristen spins romaine leaves in a spinner, Mom takes the crispy pancetta and crumbles it on the asparagus. I love that touch.

So for a late lunch we have arroz con pollo, amarillitos, habichuelas guisadas, aspárragos y ensalada. I have seconds and finish Kristen's plate.

The next day, I wake up feeling a little full. I stick to soup and salad.

Latitude and Longitude

After so many years of living and now visiting my home island, you wonder when you'll bump into a local version of seared ahi tuna and Caesar salad. Well, the time finally has arrived.

We've seen the same thing in K's hometown of Bethlehem, Pa.: People flee to the big city and sweat it out in the kitchens, working their way up until they say, "Hey, maybe we should try this at home." Granted, Aguadilla and Isabela, P.R. are a lot farther than Bethlehem to Bouley and the Flatiron district, but you get the idea. When people tire of Moravian sugar cakes and apple butter, they want Alice Waters' stuff.

Restaurant 18'67" (check your GPS) is cut from the same cloth. K and I did split a Caesar to start, and then I was reminded of my dad's favorite saying: You're still in Puerto Rico. I asked for cracked pepper, and the waitress spaced it out and went back to her station to add up some tabs. I flagged the other server on the floor, who brought a pepper shaker from another table, because no, they didn't have a spice mill for the salad. Why am I not surprised?

The wife changed the pace from the rice and beans with linguine with pesto and beurre blanc. Beurre blanc! I had braised pork loin stuffed with chorizo sausage in guava sauce, along with rice and beans. (I don't see a reason to change the pace. The pork was tender, the guava not too sweet and pink beans as good here as they are everywhere else, including Vangy's.) It was a Tuesday, which means it's two entrees for $20 -- a steal. No wonder it's crowded with surfers and gringo ex-pats.

The place is funny: Looks like they took over some retail space, complete with the track lighting and acoustic tile, next to a Chinese restaurant. They put a kitchen in back and a cut a door for an adjacent bar. The manager (could be the owner) wears a newsboy's cap. Pool games were 50 cents and there were drunk barflies on both nights we visited. I think I heard some Nirvana. I thought of my favorite chiperos, Alex and Elbo.

El Pescador

I imagine if you grew up in New York City that for special gatherings and family occasions you trek down to the delicatessen, or maybe in Los Angeles or San Francisco there's a particular dim sum place the folks like. Where I grew up, a town that I now describe as the Perth of Puerto Rico (this gets a laugh every time), the trip was to the Southwest coast to an area known as Joyuda, where there still are more than 40 restaurants serving slight variations of the same things.

Think of seafood places from Maine down to Maryland. Sure, each one has something a little different, but there are few surprises or standouts.

In Joyuda, there's one place called Brisas that brings out a plate of stewed rice with everything. Raítos was famous for its empanadilla fritters, which are like empanadas, only bigger, more bad for you and meant to be eaten with your hands. Since K and I were on the Northwest coast, a little research brought up Mesón Gastronómico El Pescador (sorry, no URL) on the waterfront of Isabela.

Now this place may have had basically the same menu available on Puerto Rican coasts everywhere -- white fishes like snapper, shellfish like lobster, rice and beans, plantains -- El Pescador distinguished itself by executing each dish and course perfectly, no misses, save for one, but let me begin to explain.

A seafood dinner in Puerto Rico means you kick off with ice-cold beer (a considerate, efficient wait staff knows this, and tonight was no exception) and with some appetizers, the fried kind. My Medalla, brewed in my hometown of Mayagüez, came out with a frosty mug as I put in our starters: bolitas de mero and arañitas. The former are fish croquettes, most likely grouper lightly battered, and the latter are bundles of shredded plantain that I believe are double-fried, dipped in a salt-water bath in between for extra crispiness. The "little spiders" usually are the size of a half-dollar, but these were quite a bit larger than that, but I assure you that they didn't last.

The bolitas had exactly the right texture and hints of the sea; I'm pretty sure grouper lends itself best to this. You dip them in a Frenchy dressing, and you understand the true sense of an appetizer. The coolness, dryness and carbonation of the brew is a near-unbeatable pairing. You settle down a little bit and look around the room; someone's painted an oil of the life-size fisherman sculpture that's out in front. There are some clippings here and there; the Mesón has gotten some press, along with the kiosks that dot the small waterfront. The dive across the square offers clams, oysters, fluorescent lights and video poker. It's cute, tropical, very Puerto Rico. The waitress clears appetizer plates and asks if I want another beer. Yes, I do. Here come the small green salads with a slice of tomato and cucumber, more Frenchy dressing.


For our main courses, I am having a fillet of snapper with mojo entomatado, in the Creole style with tomatoes, peppers and onions. It's something I've enjoyed many, many times and still do, although I vary it slightly from time to time. (Notice the pattern? Next time I'm getting the whole snapper, which was featured in a newspaper clipping and looked dynamite.) K ventures for the chicken breast, which is a steal at $10.98, but I'm a little apprehensive.

A: "Are you sure you want the chicken?"

K: "There's no salmon."

A: "I know, but there's shrimp, lobster ... other fish ... um ... OK ... fine."

Let's get this chicken out of the way. It's a breast, pounded flat and then grilled till done, seasoned with maybe a little salt and nothing else. Kristen calls it a pancake. (In a later deconstruction, we realize that swordfish would have been one acceptable salmon sub.) She makes a couple of stabs at it, and we end up taking it home to snack between resort breakfasts and knockout dinners. God bless her, K digs into her rice and beans and tostones.

Now for the snapper, known here as chillo: It's like the New York strip of seafood entrees. It can be had a million ways and I can't remember seeing it wrecked. Wonderful with lemon and butter, breaded, baked or broiled, with chimichurri or the mojo, it's soft and delicate, the fish of fishes, yielding gently to the fork like the steaks in Nebraska or Montana or wherever, where you find your place setting don't include a knife, except the shorty for the butter.

So there you have the welcome-home combo: fish in Creole sauce, rice and beans, fried plantains, cold beer. (Mr. Chicken, the staple in every American pot, is a scratch. Sea bass my ass, we'll spot the richer swimmers next time.)

Dessert is the house specialty: el nido, or "the nest," a strawberry coated in chocolate, cookie crumbs and crushed almonds, sitting in a tiny pastry shell. K approves. We'll be back.

Next post: latitude and longitude.

In the House with Mama Vangy

After five hours on one plane, missing the quick layover in Miami (funky jet stream) and waiting three more for the next jump to San Juan, then flying almost three hours before undertaking the two-hour, white-knuckle drive on the autopista to Mayagüez, it was time for some Vangy food. Mmhm. Food's cooking.

The first day's menu featured arroz con pollo con habichuelas, pretty self-explanatory. We also got bacalao, which is salt codfish, and viandas, the assorted, yamlike, starchy tubers that you dress with Spanish olive oil. My aunt Jossette also made guineos en almibar, which are ripe bananas in nectar. No idea why this dish is that popular, but it is very sweet and goes with an otherwise salty cuisine.

There also was the requisite mixed salad, and as an appetizer one of Vangy's "secretaries" fried up some surullitos, or sticks of cornmeal. No doubt in my mind why these are popular, especially with a cervecita, a can of Bud or Coors Light or whatever that's eight or 10 ounces (not too much, stays cold).

A few days later, we're back. For a change of pace, there's arroz con gandules, or pigeon peas. The main event is pasteles, tamale-like bundles made with plantain or yucca masa and stuffed with chicken, olives and finely chopped onions, peppers, raisins, love. (If you're having yucca, they're more savory and come in a beautiful sunshine-yellow color, as opposed to the smokiness and dark, exotic tone of the maduro masa. ) Today's "secretary" also had some boneless beef ribs. You know, in case the pasteles weren't enough.


For sides, green-plantain tostones (shown in their glorious fry) also came out with some more salad. There wasn't much difference between these two meals in terms of authenticity or taste, but for some reason the second time I couldn't stop eating. Kristen's eyes got really big as I put away three pasteles, most of the ribs, spoonfuls of the stewed gandules that had small balls of plantain thrown in.

Vangy also told Kristen that she needed to learn to have beer with her Puerto Rican food -- the best advice on record from a grandmother-in-law.

Next post: el pescado.

Pan Latin? ¡'Perate!

Say what we will about the New York Times and the particular strained relationship we have with it, but one of the best things about it (I think) is that eventually the paper gets around to nailing something right on the head, and then that’s done and over with.

Today it is the article on Latin supermarkets. First let’s get to the beans:

> A walk through the dried-bean aisle at Rancho Liborio in a case in point. There are pintos, both the larger, speckled brown ones preferred by Mexicans and the smaller, lighter-colored ones used in Peru. Pink beans appeal to Puerto Ricans, and black beans to Cubans, Guatemalans and Brazilians.

Pink! As I’ve been telling everyone my whole life, those are my favorite. Now let’s do the spice:

> Attracting Hispanic shoppers is a delicate business, according to Juan Guillermo Tornoe, who runs Hispanic Trending, a market research company in Austin, Texas. Buyers for big chains will often go to Hispanic food trade shows, order everything in sight and then wonder why their efforts to market to Latinos fail. “Well, what are you buying?” he said. “Are you buying hot sauce and expecting to sell it to Cubans?”

Yeah! Most Cubans don’t eat spicy, and in fact their food (at least in Cuba) is rather bland. Is that not what they told you at Cha Cha Cha?

I also love that there's a photo of an obese lady ladling an almost certainly sweetened agua fresca.

So thank you, Bill Keller. But no tres leches for you, Judy Miller.

Habichuated

Tell me how you like your beans, and I’ll tell you where you’re from. Frijoles negros? Let’s discuss it over daiquiris at El Floridita. Pintos? The first course will probably be pozole. In Puerto Rico, black beans are only for soup, and white beans are pretty popular, but will always be a step down from gandules guisados, also known as pigeon peas or pois Congo, and on the C-list compared with the real deal, habichuelas coloradas or rosadas, reds or pinks.

I’ve gone through most of the methods, dried or canned, with a sofrito (the Creole saute of onions, garlic, tomatoes and sweet peppers) or without, and I’m happy to share all of them with you, but there’s one mainstay that has to, has to be in the stew: pork. The vegan trip won’t impart that flavor and feel, or hold everything together. (Louis Armstrong fans already know, as we know.)

So: Take a long, fatty strip of bacon or even a cut slice of pancetta and pop it into a pot of soaked beans set to boil. Leave it in there for three hours. Then go ahead and brown some diced bacon or salt pork in a pan and start your sofrito with the drippings. Chop up some peppers (pasilla, Anaheim, yellow jalapeños, whatever you have), throw in a couple of spoonfuls of tomato paste. Also check out those little cans of El Pato tomato sauce they have at Latin markets.

Soften the beans for hours, then stir in the sofrito and add salt. If they don't come out perfect, remember that they’ll be better the next day and then the day after that.

The starch basically becomes an afterthought. I'll take red beans and rice any day instead of rice and beans, and no, I don't need them wrapped up in a tortilla.