Cuisine by Country | hungry sofia

Jul 11

Porotos Granados

I always hope that someone will see a recipe on my site and decide to try it out for themselves. In the case of these porotos granados, I absolutely understand if they wait for the cooler days of summer. I came across the Chilean recipe months ago when fresh cranberry beans seemed very far away. With origins going back to the pre-Columbian Mapuche Indians, it brings together my summer favorites- fresh beans, tomatoes, and corn. Available year around as dry Roman beans, I could have made the dish with frozen corn, and canned tomatoes but decided to wait. Finally, last week the cranberry beans made their appearance at my Sunday farmer’s market, right around the time someone turned the heat up to a 100 degrees. Read more

Jun 26

2 Comments

Helado Tostado El Carmelo

It’s been coming for awhile, but instagrams are now everywhere. Nostalgia for the present makes sense in the summer and that seems to be the app for it. While I love the effects, there’s something unearned about tapping an icon and adding a 1977 filter to a 2012 happening. As someone who already has a seventies-circa filter coloring their earliest memories, it can be disorienting, erasing the line between then and now. Read more

Jun 15

6 Comments

Alfajor de Coco

In case you missed it, I posted this recipe for alfajor de coco on Devour the Blog and wanted to share it here. Normally, having something this sweet on hand is dangerous – sneaking slivers on every trip to through the kitchen until it’s gone sooner than I’d like (or would ever admit to). In this case, the tart just got better with each passing hour so I had extra motivation to keep walking until I could properly indulge.

Jun 5

7 Comments

Filloas

I’ve had it flagged for a long time but it wasn’t until this weekend that I finally made a batch of Galician filloas. Served year around in northern Spain, they are most popular during early winter’s carnival season. Similar to crêpes, they’re made from with the usual suspects – flour, eggs, milk – but can also be blended with stock and cooked off with bacon fat or lard instead of butter. The thin batter is poured onto a hot skillet (or a stone), flipped and filled or sprinkled with sugar and served as dessert. Hovering somewhere between sweet and savory, they can be hard to classify. Read more

May 20

6 Comments

Fideos Secos

It was about a year ago today that I started a major kitchen re-haul (really a few hours) before throwing a surprise party in my apartment. I say started because, while everything was put back into some kind of order, I don’t think it was really finished until this week. Faced with the potential embarrassment of friends seeing my apartment in shambles, I made miracles happen and then took some time off (about 12 months to be exact). Most of the elements were in place but crowded, and I hadn’t gotten around to tying it all together. Read more

Apr 29

29 Comments

Bollitos de Carita

When I decided to make bollitos de carita – black-eyed pea fritters made from beans soaked for hours then husked and ground to a paste – I couldn’t believe no simmering would be required. Left overnight, they were supposed to blister and pucker leaving behind perfectly tender, creamy white beans. I loved that caritas roughly translates to “little faces” and imagined removing the peel would be as simple as slipping off a mask. Not so. Some popped right out but more needed coaxing, and no matter how many I did, there were always more. Read more

Apr 17

12 Comments

Saveur Nomination and Spring Fever

First of all, I am thrilled to announce that Hungry Sofia was nominated by SAVEUR as one of this year’s best blogs in the category of Best Regional Cuisine! I am so proud to be included in a fantastic group of bloggers and can’t thank everyone enough for putting my name into the mix. I’ve discovered amazing new sites among the nominees, so I hope you’ll take a moment to jump over to Saveur. Voting is open from now until April 26. Registration is painless and you can do it here then vote here! Read more

Apr 8

5 Comments

Tarta Pascualina

I hadn’t planned on a traditional Good Friday. I was supposed to meet my friend Carolina, who was visiting, at the Met but was falling behind. I’d spent the day making a tarta Pascualina or Easter pie to write about this weekend when the day got away from me when another friend who was moving to Chicago stopped by in the afternoon to say goodbye. For the past few weeks, Aaron and I had done a lot of before-you-go things in the neighborhood but helping me finish the pie was the absolute last. The pascualina done, I changed to plan to a low-key night at home with Carol and my sister Cami – the better to catch-up on the bear of a week we’d all had. We were about to sit down when we heard the procession outside the window. Read more

Mar 23

21 Comments

Harina con Cangrejo

Despite a lifetime of research, I’m always discovering something new in Cuban food. While it reminds me not to take anything for granted, less pleasant is knowing that my nearest and dearest have been holding out on me. That’s how I felt when I discovered that harina – cornmeal simmered to a creamy state and topped with peppery sofritos and poached or fried eggs, ham or chorizo, shimp or crab – was a Cuban comfort food staple that everyone was having but no one was talking about. I’d enjoyed Italian polenta prepared this way, but I hadn’t realized there was a take on it that was much closer to home – just not my home. Read more

Mar 21

1 Comment

Hungry in Edible Manhattan

I always love coming across a copy of Edible Manhattan so I was thrilled when they asked me to contribute two pieces to their first ever dairy issue (March/April 2012). Tasked with finding the city’s best tres leches, all signs pointed to Daisy Lebron at Bizcocho de Colores in Upper Manhattan. On what seemed like the only cold day this past winter, I made the treck to the opposite side of the island and was rewarded with an amazing tres leches (or two). It was a treasure in a plastic clam shell. Click here to read Uptown, a Dominican Confection Makes Life Three Times Sweeter which includes an extended photo gallery by Elizabeth Leitzell. Read more