Venezuelan · Main
Pabellón Criollo
- Advanced
- 55 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, an earthy, grounding base, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 1 kg beef flank or skirt, in one piece
- 1 onion halved, plus 1 large onion sliced
- 1 red pepper, sliced
- 6 ají dulce peppers, seeded and chopped, or 1 extra red pepper
- 4 garlic cloves, crushed
- 400 g ripe tomatoes, grated
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- 60 ml neutral oil
- 300 g long grain white rice
- 600 g cooked caraotas negras, warm
- 2 very ripe plantains, skins blackened
- oil, for frying the tajadas
- salt
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Draining fried food: a rack, never paperSteaming: basket, leaf and lidThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: fish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cover the beef with cold water, add the halved onion and a spoonful of salt, and hold it at a bare tremble until a fork twists a strand away without force, about 2 hours; cool it in the broth and keep 300 ml of that broth. 120 min
- Tear the cooled beef by hand along the grain into long threads, never across it, since the fibres in flank all run one way and that is where the dish takes its name.
- Soften the sliced onion, red pepper, ají dulce and garlic in the oil, then add the grated tomato and cumin and cook until the pan floor stays dry for a second behind the spoon.
- Fold in the shredded beef with the reserved broth and Worcestershire and simmer uncovered until the liquid has gone and the threads are glossy and separate rather than swimming.
- Cut the plantains into 5 mm diagonal slices and fry in 1 cm of oil over gentle heat until deep amber and still bendy, not crisp, then drain and salt lightly.
- Steam the rice plainly and plate the four elements in touching stripes, beef, rice, beans and tajadas, so every forkful can take two of them.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Draining fried food: a rack, never paper 77 recipes
- The rack was in place before the first thing went into the oil, not fetched afterwards while food waited in a spider over the pot.
- It lands on a rack with air moving underneath it. Anything set down on paper or a flat plate traps its own steam against its base.
- Salted within seconds of landing, while it is still hot enough to take seasoning.
- A minute later the underside is still as crisp as the top: no soft flat patch where it has been sitting.
- Nothing is stacked or piled while hot, however tempting it is to keep it together. A pile steams itself soft from the inside out.
Where it goes wrong It was drained on paper, or piled up to keep warm. Steam leaving the food has nowhere to go but back into the crust, so the underside softens within a minute: the crispness the frying just bought is gone before the plate reaches the table.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
- Also Right
- Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
- From the Taps
- Amber ale
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water, make room
Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.
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