Food Network celebrity chef Daisy Martinez shares holiday recipes from her ancestral Puerto Rico.
A traditional Thanksgiving turkey with all the fixings is a comforting taste of home. But if home happens to be Puerto Rico and you happen to be former Food Network celebrity chef Daisy Martinez, then there’ll be a touch of spice turning up the heat on holidays. As a child growing up in Staten Island, New York, Martinez feasted on tamale-like pasteles and arroz con gandules, or rice and peas. Christmastime visits to her grandparents’ home country were replete withparrandas — house-to-house caroling in the Spanish troubadour style — and dancing. Today, Martinez honors tradition at her own table, which she shares with her husband, Jerry, and their four children. But new takes on dishes of yore make the celebrations uniquely her own.
In her book, Daisy’s Holiday Cooking: Delicious Latin Recipes for Effortless Entertaining, Martinez brings the cultural flair of her ancestral Puerto Rico to Thanksgiving, New Year’s, Christmas, Easter and other celebrations, delivering hassle-free and accessible recipes.
“The holidays are stressful enough without cooking for a houseful of people, especially for someone who doesn’t have experience,” says Martinez. “The point of these dishes is to have something elegant that looks like you put in a lot of effort, when in reality, you won’t be in the kitchen sweating with flour in your hair,” she laughs.
Part of that simplicity is mixing the old with the new — like with the pavochon she recalls making as a young wife with an infant son. A Puerto Rican-style Thanksgiving turkey, pavachon was born when the island became a part of the United States. Chefs season the bird like a traditional lechon (roasted suckling pig), with garlic, oregano, black pepper, salt and achiote-flavored oil; it’s a must-have at Christmas, but it’s a big-deal preparation for a big family.
“It was just two of us, so I got a Butterball, seasoned it and served it with not too many sides,” she recalls. “It was just enough.”
Other new takes on treasured food traditions include her choquito, the beloved yuletide coconut nog laced with chocolate, and, instead of a lechon, country-style pork spareribs braised with hermanchamantel, a fruit-based mole traditional in Mexico.
In keeping with Martinez’s “keep it simple” mantra, the book is filled with menus, to-do lists, timetables and make-aheads — which can be cooked as much as two months in advance — that make the chef’s experience more delightful and less demanding. She recommends, for example, small gatherings over the course of a holiday weekend for cooks who don’t want to prepare multicourse meals. One appealing suggestion is a South American-themed tree-trimming party, complete with Peruvian/Chilean pisco sours and nibbles like pan de jamón, a Venezuelan ham sandwich with olives and raisins.
For Martinez, taking inspiration from the Caribbean and Central and South America is the natural way to approach festive occasions. But, she says, sharing the holiday table — and not the food itself — is what really makes the season bright.
Visit daisymartinez.com for a collection of Daisy Martinez’s recipes.
Source: caribbeantravelmag.com