Oxtails as a tropical delight? Thats right! I made pasteles.

Pasteles are a big treat around here because they are so labor intensive to make, all the folding and tying and what not, not too mention the effort that goes into making the masa but I was challenged recently to do something with oxtail and I decided to do this tropical delight.



I wont bother you with all the details - instead you can watch this dark and out focus video to see how it all gets done.

Basically I put some oxtails in the pressure cooker.

I made some masa out of squash and yucca and green banana and yukon gold potatoes and folded and wrapped and tied a bunch of mini pasteles and simmered them until perfect.

Then I plated up some tasty mini pasteles with some spicy pineapple salsa a little kiwi lime sauce, yellow tomatoes, red tomatoes, some cucumber and some micro greens - and thats all she wrote.

caribe

One of my favorite foods : yucca, bacalao, gineo, and cebolla
with olive oil and fresh lime. (translated - yucca (starchy root) bacalao (dried salted cod or pollock) gineo (green banana) cebolla (onion) This meal is so light and satisfying you will want to eat it everyday.

Oil

You can have any kind of oil now; grapeseed, walnut, truffle, avocado - it seems like the list goes on and on and it only circles back to start over again, but what do you you cook with? Depending on what you are trying to do oils can enhance that situation. Chips. we made chips and we used canola oil then corn oil and found vegetable oil to be the cleanest heat resistant oil to go with. ( I have used peanut oil before but too many have allergies and even though peanut oil can heat the highest it has a bad rap)

Isnt rap like your criminal record and rep like your street cred?

Yucca chips





peel, slice, soak and fry.



Voila, chips.

Seasoned with your choice:

drizzle with your favorite flavored oil

sea salt or kosher salt

various vinegars

any seasoned salt available or any of
those powdered packaged flavors
for tacos or salad dressings...like
ranch or buffalo -for example.

parmesean or any other dry grateable cheese.

nutritional yeast or brewers yeast

invent your own.