Considering it’s been sweltering in Bushwick for the last week or so, I’ve had little desire to stand over a hot stove and actually cook. The prospect of someone else slaving away in a hot kitchen and being able to eat in nice cool air conditioning has led me out to restaurants every night, and completely decimated my bank account. So this week it’s back to basics and budget-friendly meals; I decided Penne All’Arrabbiata would be the perfect dish — it’s cheap, simple, spicy, and the ingredients can be found in ANY supermarket. Since it seemed selfish for me to keep all of this deliciousness to myself, I invited over AB, my favorite person to feed. At first, we weren’t convinced that the sauce was spicy enough, but after a few forkfuls the heat really caught up with us.

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If you read the introductory post about my culinary adventures, then you know that Quiche figures heavily in my journey. I figured for the first post, I’d make my signature dish and then move on to other endeavors.

In honor of the summer in Bushwick, I decided to use green and yellow summer squash, onion, and cotija cheese for the filling. All the ingredients are available locally. The recipe for two quiche, and some tips are as follows:

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The other day Luis came home from work and said, “let’s make a pastelón this weekend. I’ve been craving it.” Aside from the basics, I have almost no idea about Puerto Rican food. Turns out, a pastelón is a sort of shepherd’s pie made with ripe plantains layered with seasoned ground beef. We have a book of basic Puerto Rican recipes, the housewife’s staple Cocina Criolla, but the steps were so involved and numerous that Luis decided he’d just call his mom and ask how she did it. Instead of mashing boiled plantains, as the book says to do, she bakes them sliced longways, and layers them sort of like lasagna, but with just one layer of filling.

So between her recipe and the one in the book, here is the one we came up with, based on the ingredients we had on hand, and our preferences. You can certainly get all of these ingredients on almost any corner in Bushwick: bell pepper, garlic, onion, tomato, tomato sauce, plantains, olives, ground beef, eggs, adobo powder. Capers, maybe not, but it doesn’t hurt to look.

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Half the time I would go to a Cuban restaurant, this is what I would eat. Palomilla is thin-sliced grilled steak smothered in onions, seasoned with adobo and lime. Adobo in the Spanish Caribbean is usually salt, pepper, oregano, and garlic; store brands usually have turmeric for color.

I bought all of my ingredients at our clean, well-stocked Associated on Knickerbocker, where the stock boy helped me get something off a high shelf, the cashier smiled at me, and a small woman swiftly bagged my groceries and placed them in my “old lady” cart. I handed the industrious woman a couple bucks and thanked her on my way out.

The steak they sell at most bodegas comes in thin slices, so you don’t have to go out of your way in Bushwick to find the right cut. You can certainly make your own adobo, it’s damn easy, but if you use it often it’s even easier to buy a huge bottle of it, since it stays pretty potent for a long time. I was lucky enough to have a friend who makes it herself according to a family recipe. I put the adobo (with some extra oregano from my garden) in my mortar and ground it up with some olive oil, just enough so that it’s a very thick paste. Then I squeezed half the juice of half a lime in, and mixed that up. I brushed the steak with the paste and let it sit.

Meanwhile, I heated up my grill pan, and arranged slices of thick-cut yellow onions (about 1/2 inch) that I brushed with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. I let them get pretty soft, flipping them once so that the grill left dark marks on them.

Palomilla is supposed to be grilled, but I prefer to use a pan because I like to sauté the onions in it after I cook the steak. Just put your pan on high heat until it’s very hot, and toss your steak in. Turn it after about 45 seconds, and then pull it out after about another minute. Grab a few of the onions and toss them in the pan, still on high heat, and squeeze the rest of the lime over them. Sauté until the liquid is gone and the onions are translucent, if they didn’t get that way on the grill. Top the steak with them and eat up! It’s typically served with, duh, rice and beans.

Wondering what all those roots on the table at the bodega are? I’ll show you over the next few weeks. We’re going to start with the simplest and my favorite: yuca.

It’s the long, brown, sometimes waxy root that can’t seem to be contained in a produce bin. None of this should matter, because unless you like to torture yourself, you will buy frozen bags of yuca, sometimes called “cassava” on the package — which I guess is the English word? If your bodega doesn’t have it frozen, you should not shop there. If you insist on doing it like the frickin Indians, buy a root with no blemishes on it whatsoever — it should be totally firm all over. Peel it with a sharp paring knife until it’s all white. You’ll still probably have to throw away 1/4-1/3 of the yuca when you invariably find mold in it. Chop what remains into big hunks like in the photo below. Again, I cannot stress how dumb it is to buy it fresh when Goya has done all the processing for you and froze it and will sell it to you for cheaper than fresh.

If it’s fresh, you will have to boil it in salted water with a few smashed garlic cloves for about 10-15 minutes or until totally tender to the center. If frozen, give it about 25-35 — you do not want undercooked yuca. To test for doneness, pull a large piece out and cut it open. If it is anything but completely translucent looking, if any small bit of white remains, put it back in the water. The white parts are chalky, and no amount of sauce will make it taste like anything but dirt.

While it cooks, heat about a cup of olive oil in a pan until it’s almost smoking. In a ramekin or some other heatproof bowl, have about a full head of minced garlic (the Associated on Knickerbocker sells 5 heads for a buck!) and sprinkle with a little salt. When the oil is screaming hot, pour it over the garlic — it should bubble and steam, cooking the garlic and infusing the oil. Just let it sit until the yuca is done. That’s your mojo. Some people like to add a little citrus juice. Feel free, but then you have to mix it like a vinaigrette and that’s a pain.

When the yuca is done, pull the pieces out of the water and place on a cutting board. There is a little fibrous spine that runs through the center that you will have to pull out; it will peel away easily. Arrange whatever portion you like on your plate and then spoon generous amounts of the mojo. At that point I usually hit it with a lot of black pepper and, being a salt fiend, more salt.

From this point you can also make fried yuca — simply cut the boiled yuca into thick batons and drop into hot oil (pan-frying won’t work, they will stick and then fall apart). Fish them out when they’re golden, and dip into the mojo and eat like french fries.

There are many other uses for yuca that you can look up. Now you know the basics of preparation, the rest is just adding yuca to other stuff.

Tamarinds are sticky, dense, sweet and sour brown pods that grow in tropical areas around the world, including my home region of South Florida. In the Caribbean and Mexico, it is usually used for sweet preparations, as opposed to the more savory dishes of South and Southeast Asian food.

Do not even bother buying the whole tamarind pods, they are a pain in the ass to process and it’s not worth it. You can buy it already processed in blocks, and you might want to if you plan on using it in savory preparations. For my purposes, I just buy a big jug of tamarind syrup, which I get at the Associated on Knickerbocker. It’s all natural — just tamarind pulp, water, and sugar. Many times they use corn syrup, so if you want to avoid that, find a brand with sugar.

My favorite — and the most basic — way to use this fruit is for agua de tamarindo. Just pour a few tablespoons into a glass, fill the rest up with water and ice, mix to dissolve the syrup, and drink. I like bubbles, so I usually use seltzer instead of water, but it’s the same thing. I also once made a cocktail at a BBQ once with tamarind syrup, seltzer, and dark rum, which was pretty good.

It’s not traditional but you can also cook with tamarind syrup. An obvious way to use it is as a glaze. I put about half a cup of it in a small pot with some chile flakes for heat and let it simmer for just a minute. Then I brushed it on chicken legs that I had brined for a couple hours in some salted tamarind water, just to make sure it got the flavor inside the meat. I just broiled them for about 30 minutes, until the skin was dark brown and crispy, and served with rice. (The photos got corrupted or I’d post them.)

Tamarind has a distinct flavor, so I wouldn’t use it to replace any old syrup. But it’s great with meat like chicken or pork, which take well to sweet sauces.

Since I love cooking and am familiar with most of the Spanish Caribbean’s cuisine, particularly Cuba, I figured I’d start a “segment” about cooking with what you can find in your local bodegas. Convenient, huh? It won’t always be Caribbean, but you’ll be able to make it with locally available — and dirt cheap — ingredients.

Plátanos maduros — fried ripe plantains — is a comfort food that also satisfies your sweet tooth. Nothing transports me back to Miami in this cold season like a plate piled high with those gooshy, greasy yellow blobs. Plantains look like gigantic bananas and are available year-round at literally any store that sells food in Bushwick. Sometimes if you luck out you can find them almost ripe at the store, but usually they are mostly green. You’ll have to buy them and then wait for them to ripen, usually a week or more, though you can speed the process up by putting them in a basket over your radiator, or inside a gas oven (don’t forget to take them out if you use the oven for something else!) They’re extremely cheap; you can buy several for a buck sometimes.

Your plantain should be black. Not yellow, that’s still unripe. Totally black. When you squeeze it, it should feel like it’s full of pudding. If it’s still firm, let it ripen more. If they’re too starchy they will come out crunchy instead of chewy, and those are tostones, something we’ll go into another time. more »