Fried plaintains
Today was a cooking day: arroz con pollo, Puerto Rican style. Fried plantains, too.
I really miss the Puerto Rican food I grew up with in New York City. Diana, an older friend I had when I was 17, made the best arroz con pollo on the face of the earth. She tried to teach me how to replicate it but I never even came close. I decided to try again when I discovered that a couple of the Mexican food centers in Berkeley carry Goya products.
Goya, oh Boya! Their advertising catchphrase sounded wonderful when the company’s 1980s spokesperson, actor Zohra Lampert, of Let’s Scare Jessica to Death fame, semi-whispered it on TV.
Goya is ubiquitous in New York City. Anyone who has taken the subway would have seen their ads even if they never cooked.
Making these things reminds me of trips to Orchard Beach with Diana and her large family. We would haul enough arroz con pollo there to feed an army, and pick up tropical sodas and other family members in the Bronx on the way. It took us a couple of hours to get there because there was no end to the stops for this or that.
Diana’s annatto-laced reddish rice — moist but still crumbly and never gummy — was the star of her arroz con pollo show. She had gandules (pigeon peas) in there, and capers, and sofrito, a fresh seasoning mix. So many wonderful things. She put it all together by feel and the dish was always spectacular.
We would eat it warm, and the chicken pieces – still on the bone – would loosen and pop out of the rice when you dug into it with a big spoon.
I still hear clashing music and family mayhem coming from all those jam-packed picnic tables at Orchard Beach on hot summer days. Now and then I’m sitting in the back seat of that loaded station wagon heading down the Grand Concourse full tilt as happy as WKTU’s disco beat.
I won’t bother giving you the recipe for the chicken because I need to work on it, but plantain instructions follow.
Senior prom tonight, and look out!
Matthew Valencia and Jon Hampton-McKean are heading out in style to the Stanford Court Hotel in San Francisco, California, for Albany High School’s 2006 Senior Prom.
There will be international food stations and dancing.
My senior prom was in the gym of my high school. Clearly things have changed.
Getting these two ready was a challenge since they wanted to look JUST SO.
Berry seems to have a built-in antenna that draws him directly to people who are going to a special event and cannot afford to have his hair all over them. The more you need him away, the more suspicious he becomes and the more tenacious. Throughout the late afternoon there were cries of, “Berry, get away from me!” and “Berry keeps trying to rub his neck on my tux!”
When they left, Steven, my mom and I had a nice dinner and watched a movie.
Matt and Jon rolled in about 3 a.m. – having taken the night owl bus to the East Bay from the Transbay Terminal – with stories of the grand food and class that pervaded the affair.
Ah, to be young men about town in the magic that is late-night Nob Hill and Union Square!
