with Mary Anne Mohanraj
Cooking for the Venezuelan refugees again today — tried a new recipe for pulled pork — delicious.
This is a pretty frugal option for feeding a meat-loving crowd — 4 pounds of bone-in pork for $15. I only did a double recipe of this (instead of quadrupling to feed 40), because I was also planning on a chicken dish.
https://www.seriouseats.com/venezuelan-style-arepas-with…
In theory, I’ll be making arepas to accompany them; we’ll see how it goes. 
Just clearing out my phone photos a bit — this is from a few weeks ago, making lunch for my SLF and Serendib teams. We do most of our work online, but I think it really helps getting together in person once in a while.
Salmon green curry, gado-gado (Indonesian spicy peanut sauce with a mix of raw and cooked vegetables), my rose ice cream with pomegranate molasses. I have a little bit of rose ice cream left — I think I might try making elderberry ice cream next…
The first few times I went to Hawai’i, Jed treated me to a lot of sightseeing and tourist stuff, which was great — helicopter tour, snuba, visit to the Dole Plantation and the queen’s palace, lots of eating at local restaurants.
This trip, I pretty much went straight to friends’ houses, shopped at local markets for groceries (and poke), and cooked (sometimes re-cooking leftovers to be more curry-ish).
For writing retreats, I love the novelty of travel; it’s very stimulating. But I also like going to the same place again and just living like a local — I end up with a lot more time for focusing on writing.
Avocados from my friend’s tree. So nice. It was producing more avocados than the two of us could keep up with.
Sri Lankan cashew milk toffee has a texture similar to pralines or New England maple candy — it’s not really a toffee, despite the name; more like a crisp fudge? It melts in your mouth — it’s really the texture that I love so much.
That does mean that cutting it into squares can be a little challenging sometimes, and so if you order them from me, they may not be perfectly square. That’s how you know it’s ‘artisanal.’
Kavi’s had a bit of a stomach bug the last two days and hasn’t been eating much and it’s made me a little anxious because if I love you and you’re not eating well and I can’t feed you, I can’t think straight…
(but I try to keep all that to myself so my anxieties doesn’t spill over onto her and make her anxious)
…so when she finally looked up from the TV and asked if we had avocados (yes) and if I could make her avocado toast, I may have gone a little overboard.
(I asked her which one she liked best: tomato, bell pepper, parsley, flake salt — she liked them all equally, which is not helpful. Oh well.)
As part of my birthday week celebrations, and since we were up near the area anyway (taking the kids to Foster Beach), I finally stopped by the new Sri Lankan-owned restaurant, Cafe Nova. Their regular menu is a mix of Indian and Sri Lankan dishes, so you can get samosas, if you like (and they even have nasi goreng, so a little Indonesian too).
I went for the Sri Lankan, of course, and I’m delighted to report that it was very tasty. Kottu paratha, chicken mustard curry, lentil curry, all delicious.
There’s apparently a Sri Lankan buffet on Sunday afternoons, so I really need to get over there sometime soon. It’s a bit of a hike from Oak Park — 45-75 minutes, depending on traffic, but maybe Sundays wouldn’t be so bad.
Chicago folks in the area, PLEASE try them out if this appeals to you at all. I’ve lived in the Midwest for two decades, with the closest Sri Lankan restaurant eight hours away in Minnesota. I’d really like this place to survive and thrive — they have plans to open more of them, but first, this one has to succeed. Check them out!
Their FB page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092715760941
6431 N. Sheridan Road., on the Loyola campus, near Evanston.
Kevin did most of the cooking for the Venezuelan refugee lunch on Friday, while I was at the beach with the kids. He made rice and beans, but the main entree was carne mechada, a Venezuelan shredded beef dish.
Typically it’s made with skirt or flank steak, but since we were quadrupling the recipe (to feed about 40), I picked up a cheaper cut of meat, brisket, instead. About $50 ($5.98 / lb at Wild Fork), so a good option for feeding a (non-veg) crowd.
Brisket takes an hour or so longer to cook, so you do have to allow for that, and the end result is a little drier, Kevin says? But I thought it was still quite tasty.
We also did a big fruit salad; I put in avocado, which they may not do in Venezuela? But we do in Sri Lanka, and it’s delicious — I usually do a lime-honey dressing to go with it. Hope they liked it! I’m guessing they don’t have a lot of access to fresh fruit right now. 
Recipe for Carne Mechada: https://mommyshomecooking.com/venezuelan-shredded-beef/
We did some cooking for the Venezuelan refugees this weekend — Kevin actually did most of it, but I did make polvorosas. These are little Venezuelan shortbread cookies — the name means ‘powdery’ and the cookies have a powdery / sandy texture — crisp on the outside and powdery on the interior, delicious with a cup of coffee or tea.
I’m not sure I quite understand the science of baking here — they’re made with clarified butter (I made mine, but you could also just buy ghee instead), and I have to think that that’s what changes the texture. So you’re removing the milk solids — that’s reducing the amount of protein and maybe a little bit of water? Is that what gives them a more powdery texture than traditional shortbread (made with regular butter)? It must be, right?
These would be fun to make with kids — easy and tasty!
This is the recipe I used: https://www.mycolombianrecipes.com/polvorosas-colombian…/
(Continuing from previous post, last post in sequence).
So after all that, I needed a dessert for the refugees, right? I was originally going to make polvorosas (Venezuelan shortbread cookies) with the kids, but our schedule didn’t really work out for that. And I was really intrigued by a dish called majarete — sort of like a flan, but made with corn and coconut milk. Intriguing!
In case it’s not clear, while this project of cooking a lunch for 42 refugees was a fair bit of work, it was also a lot of fun for me. I love learning new things, and exploring a new-to-me-cuisine gave me plenty of reward for the labor. I could’ve just made lots of trays of mac-and-cheese with roasted broccoli, which I’ve made so often for the kids in the last decade that I can do it in my sleep, but learning to cook Venezuelan food was much more interesting!
Anyway, back to majarete. I’m not sure I’d recommend this one, unless you have a fair bit of time, because it had one really tedious step, be warned.
***
It starts out simple enough — simmering milk with cinnamon sticks and nutmeg. Easy-peasy.
The next step involved blending corn, coconut milk, cornstarch and sugar. I started to do this in my blender, and then realized that was a mistake (I made a LOT of dirty dishes with this particular recipe), because I’d have to do it three separate times for a triple batch. Instead, I dumped it all into my biggest pot (just fit), and pulled out the stick blender.
That worked pretty well, though it took a little longer to get it smooth than my regular blender would have. But then came the tricky bit — the final dish is supposed to have a silky-smooth texture, so you need to strain out any grainy corn bits. Reader, that took a while. And it was messy. My bowls weren’t big enough. There was corn everywhere.
I eventually had to get Kavi to stop watching Jane the Virgin (she’s on her third or fourth rewatch, and I suppose it’s solidifying her Spanish, which is something) to come help me, holding the sieve while I scraped with the spatula, trying to get the liquid to drip through…
…well, it took a while, okay. Cleaning up my kitchen also took a while. Let’s leave it at that.
***
Eventually, I was able to combine the sieved corn & coconut milk mixture with the milk/cinnamon/nutmeg mixture, and cook it down for a little bit, and pour it into two foil half-pans, and put them in the fridge to chill.
(Pro-tip — slide a cutting board underneath foil trays when moving them to the fridge or oven, if they have liquids inside. And for transport on the day of, flat pieces of cardboard cut from boxes work well.)
The end result — SO TASTY. I’m not going to make a triple batch again anytime soon, and I think maybe we should invest in a proper chinois — that might help with the sieving? I’m not sure. But I definitely like this quite a bit. If you like flan, coconut milk, and corn, I’d recommend trying majarete! (There are apparently pre-made mixes that are much less work…)
Recipe: https://blog.amigofoods.com/…/majarete-latin-corn-pudding/
***
And that was it — we packed up the food, along with some water and lemonade and juice boxes, drove them over, and the kids helped me deliver to the refugees (who also ran over to help carry things).
It honestly felt like so little to contribute — one meal, when their needs are clearly so great. One man asked me if I knew of anywhere a family of five could rent an apartment, and I had no idea. Kavi was trying to translate for me, since my Spanish is pretty terrible (so out of practice since studying in grad school), but hers isn’t so much better, so I’m really unclear on whether he actually had money for rent or not, for example. I hope a refugee org. can help them out soon.
It was truly pitiful, seeing the toddlers on that piece of concrete. I hope their parents can get them into a proper home soon.
***
If you’re wanting to donate, I’m honestly not sure what the best orgs would be — a quick search turned up Panas en Chicago (https://panasenchicago.org), but I haven’t vetted them, so if anyone knows more and wants to suggest orgs, please do feel free to leave the details in the comments:
