Author: Mary Anne

Okay, so this isn’t EXACTLY a Venezuelan recipe? I was thinking that mostly volunteers have been dropping off dishes with chicken or beef or pork for the refugees (meat was requested on the sign-up sheet), and maybe they’d like some seafood for a change.

Not everyone likes seafood, of course, so I also made a chicken dish to be safe. But googling led me to believe that sardines are popular there, so I thought I’d try them.

I ended up combining two different recipes, so I’m not sure this is quite what you would get in Venezuela, but I did use their flavors, and the end result is DELICIOUS. I had a little bit to try with corn muffins, and it was SO GOOD — the flavors pair beautifully.

It’s similar to some Italian sardine dishes, I think. I don’t normally eat sardines that often, but I do love a Sri Lankan mackerel curry, and sardines are in the same ballpark, so I think I may try eating them more often. Also, did I mention, they’re really cheap? In this era of soaring grocery prices, worth noting.

The recipes I started with were:

– a Sardine Mojito (not the drink kind!) — https://steemit.com/…/recipe-mojito-sardine-step-by…

– Sopa de Pescado (fish soup)

https://thecookwaregeek.com/venezuelan-sopa-de-pescado…/

*****

Venezuelan-Style Sardine & Potato Stew
(serves 12 as a main dish, 24 as a side)

1/4 c. vegetable oil
3 onions, sliced
6 cloves garlic, chopped
3-4 potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 t. cumin powder
1/2 t. pepper
6 cans sardines packed in oil
2 14 oz. cans diced tomatoes
salt to taste

1. Heat oil in a large pan. Add onions and garlic, and stir until onions are translucent.

2. Add potatoes, cumin powder, and pepper; continue to stir until about half-way cooked (if you prefer, you can parboil the potatoes first in the microwave or on the stove, so they cook faster).

3. Add diced tomatoes, bring to a boil, cover, and lower head to medium. Cook another 10 minutes or so, until potatoes are cooked through and tomatoes are somewhat reduced.

4. Add 5 cans of sardines (reserving 1), and stir in GENTLY. Let simmer 10 minutes or so for the flavors to blend. (Add water if needed to keep from sticking.)

5. Turn into serving dish and top with last tin of sardines. Enjoy with arepas or corn muffins.

The first is beef & potato curry with cabbage sambol. The cabbage sambol, I’m pleased to report, came out just fine from the freezer — not QUITE as crisp as when it went in, but still with a good toothsome bite. I’m planning to just make a whole cabbage’s worth next time I cook Sri Lankan, and portion it out and freeze it, so I have an easy vegetable to add on busy weeknights.

Last week’s quick-pickling resulted in onions that are yummy on a bagel with cream cheese and lox; I also picked up some house-made roast beef at Carnivore Oak Park this week, and I’m planning on a nice sandwich sometime soon with the pickled onions and horseradish. Mmm…

And I’ve been feeling very cheese-bite focused recently, for some reason, so last’s night’s first dinner (followed, of course, by second dinner), was just 6-month aged Manchego cheese and these intense cherries in syrup. Lovely pairing. Bite of cheese, pop in a cherry, repeat. I’ll have a fair bit of cherry syrup left over, which should go nicely in cocktails or mocktails. Or maybe a glaze for roast pork…

The addition of a mojo (fragrant garlic & herb vinegar & lime sauce) as a final step takes it over the top.

Pollo A La Brasa Venezolano recipe here: https://mommyshomecooking.com/easy-venezuelan-roasted…/

It’s funny how it really does help me motivate if there’s a new recipe for me to try; I guess that’s part of the ADHD thing. I am super-motivated by novelty. (It’s a good thing Kevin is willing to just make the black beans and rice for me every time, so I don’t have to trudge through that.)

The new dish this time was Venezuelan roast chicken, which I really like. I’m learning the flavors — not heavy on heat, it seems like, but lots of vinegar, lime, onion and garlic, oregano, cumin, parsley or cilantro. And they use green peppers a lot, which I don’t generally cook with (unless I’m making stuffed green peppers, which I do on occasion.)

Lots of the cooking technique is the same as what I’d normally cook, but the flavor profile is just different enough to make it interesting to me.

Pollo A La Brasa Venezolano recipe here: https://mommyshomecooking.com/easy-venezuelan-roasted…/

Step 1 for this dish was to chop up stuff, mix it, pulverize it in a food processor to make a marinade for chicken. The only tricky bit was multiplying the recipe by 6 (there are currently about 55 refugees at the station) — I had a moment when I wasn’t sure I had a big enough bowl. But it turned out I did have one giant metal bowl.

We’ve been cooking one meal about once a week for a month or so now, and I think we can mostly keep doing that through the fall. I’m hoping they can resettle these groups and get them into shelters before winter hits — if I were going to be cooking for them long-term, I imagine I’d invest in more restaurant-size cookware.

I just don’t see how it’s going to be feasible to have them still just waiting in front of the police station once Chicago gets into the really bad weather. As it is, I think they’re going to need more than one flimsy pop-up tent pretty soon.

(Again, locals, if you’d like to join the meal train, let me know, and I’ll put you in touch with the organizer.)

Gods, I love when I have a good curry on hand — makes my life so much better. Made Sri Lankan black pork curry this weekend, intensely flavored with vinegar and black pepper, and have been happily eating it paired with red cabbage sambol and a mix of red and white rice (red rice has a lower glycemic index than white, and I like the taste of the blend).

It uses quite a bit of black pepper, so I usually keep some ground (using the coffee grinder that I use as a spice grinder) on hand for this. I was out, so I ground up another batch. I love the Penzey’s Tellicherry black peppercorns flavor.

Recipes:

https://serendibkitchen.com/2021/11/06/black-pork-curry/

https://serendibkitchen.com/…/sri-lankan-red-cabbage…/