Two years ago I asked my readers a question: “Do we really do this?”. The full question was “do we Dominicans really use sopitas (bouillon cubes) so much?”. The question came after a discussion with some online friends on the subject. Coming from a family in which cooking with natural ingredients was the norm, I rarely
We have mentioned before the old maxim that while cooking is an art, baking is science. We are sorry to have perpetuated a myth. We’re usually better than that. The fact is, cooking is as much science as baking, and baking is as much an art as cooking. Very few artistic disciplines are rooted in
It was love at first sight with Mr. Queso de Hoja, the cheese vendor, whose, uh, balls of cheese were always the freshest… Oh, how I miss the street vendors. All vendors really, but in particular, and in no small part due to their multitude, the food vendors, of course. The travelling hair accessories guy
Many of our readers have let us know how much they appreciate the background information we provide on many of our dishes, their origins and cultural context. What you may not know is how much we enjoy doing this research, learning about our food and culture, and about the people that have given them to
Based on the data published in December by the Dominican Ministry of Agriculture, Dominicans consume about 200 times as much chicken as the next most popular meat: pork. This is not strange at all: chicken is less expensive, abundant and easy to cook. Chicken is also one of the least controversial meats. When it comes
School summer break is almost here. My daughter finishes school in a week or so, and with it comes the good and the bad of having a 6 year old who requires supervision and entertaining. For the time being I am concentrating on the fact that I will no longer have to get up very
Quick, summer is coming soon! It’s barely May and round here the heat gives us little respite these days. Luckily it has been raining heavily for the last two days, which brings the heat and humidity down a few notches to more bearable levels. Cool enough to eat soup without melting into a puddle of sweat, and
What Dominican does not love a good pollo guisado (braised chicken)? I am the grandchild of farmers, and so is my husband. If you can count on anything it is on farmers being sensible people. They are rarely too picky about their food, after all they know full well that pork does not come cut into
“Jamaican” you said? Yes, and this would not be the first time we write about Jamaican cuisine, or the [counts fingers] er… many times we have written about other Caribbean cuisines. One of the best ways to learn more about your own culture is to study that of your neighbors. Not surprisingly Caribbean cuisines have
So you have guests, and you want to impress them with your mad cooking skills, but you don’t want to go out hunting for fancy, exotic ingredients. Few dishes seem to impress people more than a meat roast, it looks like the kind of thing one ought to eat at a restaurant, but fear not,
Regardless of the origin of this dish it has been adopted by Dominicans as another often-found dish in our picadera platter. There are many variations of this dish depending on which ingredients you are using. Here we present you with the most common one in the Dominican Rep. and give you suggestions on what other
We were guests in the home of Dominican friends. Three weeks passed without incident, until one day Mr. Rivera took ill and went to the hospital with who-knew-what stomach ailment. His wife stayed by his side morning and night, and I was thrust in the role of “Ama de Casa”. I decided right away that
Speaking of locrio de Pollo (Dominican rice and chicken), let me tell you a story… There are some cooking disasters that nobody but us knows, secrets that we keep as if they were bedroom secrets. Others, well, those others nobody seems to forget. My most infamous ones you ask? They seem to all involve rice.
In a slight but not complete departure from Dominican themes this week, we explore the delights of food in the movies. There are some movies one should never go to see on an empty stomach. The first time that I learned this lesson was over 15 years ago when I went to see ‘Dim Sum’
You know what you’re making for supper. You stopped at the grocery store on your way home from work and picked up the necessary ingredients. You’ve diced your onion, your oil is a-heating. OK. Recipe calls for one sopita (a chicken broth cube). One sopita, one sopita… where in Julia Child’s name is the sopita???
Why spend money on losing weight when it’s mainly a question of common sense? Diets are a relatively new phenomenon, unless you count the biblical “milk and honey”, “bread and fishes” or the Roman “wine, women and song” as diets. The compulsion to go on a diet is relatively recent, because not so long ago
Sancocho in the Dominican Republic is synonymous with party. Dominicans are spontaneous and happy people who do not need much of an excuse to party. Where there are two or more Dominicans, a party may break out at any moment; some occasions, however, call for more lavish and elaborate celebrations. A baptism is an occasion
A party’s not a party without a picadera – I may or may not have that printed on a t-shirt. Seriously. My experience with picadera in the DR is that you have to be pretty forceful to get any. If it’s a table laid out with food, you want to elbow your way in there,
Aunt Clara's Kitchen is a collection of traditional Dominican and Dominican-inspired recipes, home ideas, crafts, and the chronicles of Aunt Clara and Aunt Ilana's adventures.
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