A ‘Casual’ Dinner in Puerto Rico: From The New York Times Archives

Craig Claiborne writes about his experience dining at La Fortaleza in 1978

Next Week

A List Of All The James Beard Nominated Places In Puerto Rico

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Every morning I write. Doesn’t matter if it’s only a few words, a few sentences, or several paragraphs of rambling. I write. My fingers tippy tap the keyboard between five o’clock in the morning until the early afternoon. I open up all of my windows. I make my coffee. I listen to my next door neighbors converse, shout and compromise with their two children while getting them prepared for school. But lately, I’ve been mostly been returning to researching Puerto Rican shit.

I came upon this article written by Craig Claiborne in 1978. Craig Claiborne was a food journalist and restaurant critic at The New York Times. His contributions to American culinary culture are are parallel to Julia Child and James Beard. He also introduced the four-star rating system in food journalism for rating restaurants.

We also get some insight on how some people were making sofrito in the 1970s.

Anyway, I thought y’all might like to read it. And I know if I include a link to it, a lot of you will not follow the link. Why? I have yet to figure it out. Here is the NYT story right here in your very own email. Let me know what you think down in the comments.

*All the footnotes are my own

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - WHEN we were invited to dine at La Fortaleza, the Governor's mansion in Puerto Rico and the oldest government house in the Western Hemisphere still in original use, we found the invitation irresistible. Not only because the building itself is a splendidly maintained, even elegant, historic monument. And not only because it would give us a fine opportunity to discuss the ins and outs of Puerto Rican cookery with the chef. But because we knew that the chatelaine¹ of the mansion is a lady named Kate Donnelly of Baldwin, L.I.²

When she flew down to Puerto Rico as a young girl slightly more than 15 years ago, she could never have entertained the notion that she would wind up as the wife of the Governor, Carlos Romero Barcelo, and the first lady of this island.

When we spoke to Mrs. Romero by phone, she told us that “it is a guayabera evening.” That is to say we would be expected to wear casual attire and a guayabera if we owned one.

A guayabera is a loose‐fitting shirt, usually white and elaborately embroidered. As in the Philippines and Hong Kong, the shirts are much in vogue here. The origin in this hemisphere, for what it's worth, is said to be Cuban.

First stop on the visit was the kitchen. We reached it circuitously, making our way through several public reception rooms furnished with a fascinating blend of local, Spanish and French antiques, predominantly the latter — ormolu and gold‐framed mirrors and consoles, a century‐old Baccarat chandelier, a Baccarat gas lamp in the music room. We walked through the “official” and stately dining room, a vast, high‐ceilinged place with an antique dining table that seats 36. And past a series of rooms for state guests.

And then the kitchen. The crew consists of a slender, angular‐jawed, 50-year‐old chef. Jesus Villalba, and his two assistants. When discussing recipes and such, Mr. Villalba, a good‐natured, easy‐going individual, communicates neatly in English, as well he might. During World War II, he was part of a brigade that cooked the daily rations for 5,000 to 8,000 soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. Later, he worked at something called the Jiffy Food Shop at Lexington Avenue and 46th Street.

Two of the best roast suckling pigs I've ever eaten were in Puerto Rico. Once, more than a decade ago, when the animal was hand‐turned out‐of-doors for several hours on a wooden spit over hot coals. The second was that of Mr. Villalba. He cooked it in the oven with a minimum of effort, and the results were admirable — a crisp, crusty skin with tantalizing flavor and moist, tender, well‐done meat.

The basis for most Puerto Rican cooking, an aide was saying, is called sofrito. “Basically,” he said, “it consists of cooking onion, garlic, green peppers and small cubes of ham in lard or oil and salt pork. Capers and stuffed olives are generally added later. Oregano is a frequent seasoning and culantro almost essential.”

We learned in that kitchen the distinction between fresh coriander leaves and culantro or cilantro.

The acceptance and use of fresh coriander on the American scene within the last few years has been nothing short of phenomenal. It is, of course, an essential flavor in the cuisines of, among others, China, Mexico and India, Central and South America, to be found in such random dishes as guacamole, hot and sour soup and countless curries, either as a seasoning or garnish. It was once an exotic rarity, and you had to trek down to Chinatown or to a greengrocer on Ninth Avenue to find it. Today it is found at many greengrocers as well as in the herb plots of several thousand serious cooks.

We learned the distinction between fresh coriander leaves and culantro.

As a matter of routine, we have specified “fresh coriander leaves, sometimes referred to as Chinese parsley, culantro or cilantro.”

In Puerto Rico, cooks will tell you that there is a decided difference. Fresh coriander leaves or Chinese parsley do indeed resemble parsley leaves. This is known in Spanish as cilantrillo.

Culantro, on the other hand, is bladelike, about five or six inches long and has a serrated edge. The flavor and aroma of the fresh coriander leaf and a blade of culantro are similar, but the latter is stronger, more pungent in flavor.

Dinner that evening was served on a candlelit terrace, the Atlantic just over the parapet. The meal was exceedingly good, consisting wholly of Puerto Rican foods. Platters of hot fritters, one of plantains called avisperos or wasp's nests because of their crisp, strawlike shapes, and the other of cod with mild chilies and herbs, were served with one of Mrs. Romero's inspirations, a mango daiquiri, the mango lightly laced with rum and blended with ice.

There was a compellingly good chilled avocado soup and, best of all, the triumph of the evening, what must be Puerto Rico's national dish, roast suckling pig, this one stuffed with rice and fresh pigeon peas.

During the course of the evening it was remarked to the Governor that one of the most astonishing revelations about Puerto Rico, an island bound on the one hand by the Atlantic and the other by the Caribbean, is the relative absence of fish from the diet.

“The Atlantic waters are too deep and reefs are practically nonexistent,” the Governor explained. The fish that is caught is superb when fresh. Red snapper is one of the most available fish, lobsters seem to be in reasonably good supply and land crabs, which have delicious flavor, have become relatively scarce and can mostly be found in commercial food establishments that sell the meat in ‘the form of fritters.

If there is any universal food in Puerto Rico, it is tropical fruits. Luscious mangoes of many varieties, textures and flavors; sweet‐sour and delectable passion fruit; mellow papayas and meaty coconuts. Most of the starches and vegetables in the local diet consist of root vegetables with names like yuca, chayotes, squash (calabaza) and potatoes (papas and batatas). It would seem to the casual visitor that the most ubiquitous food in Puerto Rico is the plantain, the large, nonsweet, firm‐fleshed banana with presumably a thousand uses. For this dinner, the chef prepared a fine platter of hot tostones, plantain fritters lightly flavored with garlic.

Almost all the dishes served in the mansion, Mrs. Romero declared, are built around traditional island cookery. In the guest and menu book, random entries include seviche, Puerto Rican cheeses, which are excellent, beef stuffed with ham, lobster salads and templeque; a thickened coconut pudding that may well be the national dessert.

Coconuts, incidentally, have a few hundred uses in Puerto Rican and Caribbean cooking, not only for the grated meat as in pies but also as the source of coconut cream, coconut milk and a sweetened canned liquid called cream of coconut, the basis for a multitude of rum and other drinks. In the mansion's kitchen a half cup or so of the latter is used in preparing rice with pigeon peas, a characteristic dish served as a side dish and used, at times, as a stuffing for the famed roast pig of Puerto Rico.

1. A "chatelaine" is the French term for the wife of a castellan (a governor or warden of a castle or fort) or the mistress of a large household.

2. Long Island, NY