Puerto Rican cuisine
It has been primarily a fusion influenced by the ancestors of the Puerto Rican people: the indigenous Taínos, Spanish Criollos and sub-Saharan African slaves.
[4] Puerto Rican cuisine is a product of diverse cultural influences, including Taíno Arawak, Spanish Criollos, and Africans.
By some counts, the earliest recorded use of the term barbecue can be traced back to a journal entry made by a Spanish settler upon landing in the Caribbean.
[18] The term was used by the indigenous Taino people, who referred to the practice of slow-cooking food over a raised wooden platform as barabicu, which means "sacred pit" in their language.
[19] While the Tainos likely slow-roasted fish due to the region and their diet at the time, this cooking method may have given rise to what is today known as barbecue.
The Taínos hunted birds, reptiles, and small mammals, such as hutia and gathered snails, eggs, honey, clams, oysters, and mussels.
Several popular Puerto Rican dishes date back to African influences including mofongo, bacalaitos, funche, and pasteles.
Africans transformed the ceramic cooking tool used by native Tainos to make casaba (yuca-based flatbread) into an iron griddle called “burén.” The tool is used for cooking coconut-based candies wrapped in banana leaf, mondongo, sancocho, coconut rice, gandinga, cazuela, and many plates they brought to the Puerto Rican culinary culture.
[20] Important ingredients such as bananas, plantains, yams, orégano brujo, pigeon peas, and maybe even rice were introduced by Africans through the slave trade.
Guinea fowl is a traditional Puerto Rican dish that can be prepared as a fricassee in lemon zest, sofrito, wine, raisins, olives, and other ingredients.
Roasted and marinated traditionally in adobo, orégano brujo, sazón, citrus, and vinegar and often stiffed with mofongo or arroz junto (rice, beans, and pork).
Beans like black, red or pink are cooked with additional squash and also bits of ham or salchichón (Puerto Rican salami) in water or broth.
Brazo gitano is basically a simple thin sponge, covered and filled with cream cheese with either guava, mango, lemon, corn, passionfruit, papaya, carrots with batata and spices, pistachio or nutella, and rolled up.
Mallorcas are a fluffy, yeasted sweet bread made with lard and topped with confectioners’ sugar, commonly found in Puerto Rican bakeries all over the island.
During the four centuries of Spanish rule, ships loaded with imported wheat flour docked in Old San Juan, and lard was rendered from non-native domesticated pigs to make the rich pastries adored by the criollo population.
(The ensaïmada came to contain lard when Jewish bakers in 14th century Mallorca were persecuted and decided to modify their oil and butter-based breads to “prove” they had converted their religion.)
It was Mallorcan immigrants who started the oldest and most famous mallorca bakery in Puerto Rico: La Bombonera (San Juan) Puig y Abraham, founded in 1902.
Over time, the Puerto Rican mallorca has diverged from the original to suit the local palate: It is more similar in texture to brioche with a tighter, cakier crumb, whereas the Balearic version is incredibly light and fluffy with a crispy exterior from the lard.
And while the Spanish make variations on the mallorca (like with candied squash filling, for example), in Puerto Rico they are eaten simply with powdered sugar and sometimes stuffed with ham and cheese.
Breadfruit flour is widely available throughout the island and used to make cookies, empanada dough, fry batter, bread, pancakes, and waffles.
The base is a puree made with a large amount or both cilantro and culantro, green bell peppers, garlic, yellow onions or scallions, oregano brujo, cachucha and recently parsely.
The dish is called pavochon, which is a combination of the words pavo, meaning turkey, and lechón, referring to roasted suckling pig.
Desserts and sweets are often the same as Christmas or any other holiday that includes, arroz con dulce, bead pudding, flan, cheese cake, tembleque, and cazuela.
[28] The history of Puerto Rican drinks includes the production of rum, pitorro the creation of the piña colada, and the evolution of the coquito.
In combination with the arrival of new technologies and European immigrants, who both acquired and worked the land, Puerto Rico became the fourth-largest coffee producer in the Americas.
Spanish conquistadors brought horchata to the Americas during colonization, but they did not bring tiger nuts, the key ingredient in the original recipe.
While the bar is known for creating some of the world's best cocktails, they also frequently serve typical Puerto Rican drinks that originated on the island such as piña colada, chichaíto (anisette, rum, and coffee bean on top), bilí, and coquito.
[29] Rustic stalls displaying many kinds fritters under heat lamps or behind a glass pane can be spotted in many places throughout Puerto Rico.
[32] In New York City, cuchifritos or cochifritos refers to various fried foods prepared principally of pork in Spanish and Puerto Rican cuisine.
Typically served with Puerto Rican yellow rice, jibaritos consist of a meat along with mayonnaise, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and onions, all sandwiched between a fried green plantain.
