Pasteles de Arroz: Naranjito or Corozal?
Try these regional delicacies at the annual Festival Pastel de Arroz
When Mami was sick and I still had to cook for her at the end of the day after being at the hospital for hours, I leaned heavily on quick frozen meals. I’d try to get her to eat healthy things…by luring her with the things she liked to eat. I knew she’d eat frozen egg rolls, which Great Value (Walmart’s store brand) is actually decent, but she could only have the egg rolls if she ate some of the soup I made. She could have garlic toast (which she loves), but only if she ate the spinach I [thought I] hid in the baked ravioli. Then I wrote about it for All Recipes.
I stopped writing about Puerto Rican shit for a while. I felt burnt out. That’s not entirely true. I felt even more disconnected from Puerto Rican shit after writing my cookbook because of all the personal discourse and Reddit threads surrounding me. Whether or not I was capable of writing any narrative that surrounded being Puerto Rican. As you know, many don’t consider me Puerto Rican. It pissed me off. It made me bitter. It made me not want to ever write anything about Puerto Rico ever again. “Ok, fuck it. But, don’t come to us Diasporicans when y’all need help,” I’d say. The social media rhetoric on gringos buying up the land in Puerto Rico and the Boricuas saying the Diasporicans were no different, we were also gringos. “You don’t speak Spanish.” Neither do the blanquitos! And they’re coming whether you like it or not. “Ok, fuck it. Have the white people buy up your shit then instead of your own blood who has your best interest at heart.” I was bitter as fuck. I was hurt.
For all the shit some people talk about Diasporicans, those people are only one step away from being a part of the diaspora.
There are a lot of things I did come to conclusion to while writing the book, Puerto Ricans are especially defensive about their food (even though most still don’t know shit about it. I said what I said.) because it’s really the only thing they have any control over. Their feelings are valid. I just have to learn to suck it up, listen to the harsh words and cope. They have no control over the land being sucked up by outsiders, the constant blackouts, public beach access being illegally cut off, citizens being displaced after living in rental properties for decades, and more and more English speakers - who refuse to speak Spanish - popping up in the most random of neighborhoods (seriously, why is there a white man speaking English to me in a supermarket in Fajardo?)…
Food…their birthright…is the only thing they can control. We were already losing recipes. Now we’re also losing the people who protected the recipes.
There’s a constant battle between the towns of Naranjito and Corozal on who created the regional pastel de arroz; the symbolic tradition of the montañas that goes back more than 80 years. Who created it? Who does it belong to? And where can you eat these delicious bundles of rice stuffed with various proteins? If you don’t want to arise at the break of dawn to fight others for a limited supply of fresh pasteles de arroz, don’t worry. There’s also an annual summer festival dedicated to all things pasteles de arroz in Puerto Rico. The festival offers a culinary workshop where you can learn how to make the pasteles de arroz step by step, take notes and replicate it at home. Here’s how to find to find all of it.