Zuania Muñiz Meléndez/Eater
You’ll be able to in finding mofongo far and wide San Juan. It’s served in high-end eating places and dive bars, at pop-up kiosks and roadside chinchorros (stalls), every with their very own taste and taste. However it isn’t simply ubiquitous; it additionally tells the tale of Puerto Rico. In step with historian Cruz Miguel Ortíz Cuadra, who has written about Puerto Rican culinary historical past, mofongo descends from West African fufu, a dish of boiled, mashed yams. Enslaved Africans introduced the dish to PR, traded the yams for inexperienced plantains, and tailored the method for the pilón, a picket mortar and pestle.
To make the dish as of late, chefs nonetheless use a pilón to weigh down fried plantains together with garlic, oil, and chicharrones; it will range in accordance with who’s making it, and vegetarian variations are steadily to be had. From there, they get inventive, stuffing the mashed aggregate with beef, hen, or seafood, or serving any form of entree along. In conjunction with inexperienced plantain-based mofongo, you’ll see bifongo, which provides yucca, pana (breadfruit), or candy plantains, in addition to trifongo, which mixes 3 of the above. Don’t omit to invite for mayo-ketchup, the umami-packed portmanteau condiment that completely enhances the starchy dish.
Gabriela Torres is on a adventure to search out new flavors, combining her paintings in meals journalism and meals and beverage management. She believes the most efficient phase about consuming, whether or not on her personal island of Puerto Rico or somewhere else, is attending to learn about a tradition thru its delicacies.
Be aware: Eating places in this map are indexed geographically.
