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Growing up in New York, tongue was always something I saw on the menu at Katz’s Delicatessen, but never really thought about eating. It just felt weird and seemed outrageously expensive for such an esoteric cut. I pretty much forgot about tongue as a food option until I was in Panama, and eating at Restaurante y Pizzeria Napoli. The Grub Blogger’s lady ordered lengua con macarones without even looking at the menu with an earnest seriousness I knew was only used for special moments. I quickly translated this in my mind (while I was ordering my pedestrian, but delicious, lasagna) into Pasta with Tongue. Didn’t sound too good, but, you know, I was in love. Napoli is one of several quality Italian restaurants in Panama City, representing the immigrants who came to the isthmus over the years, many of whom came to work on the Canal. Napoli has checkered tablecloths and a busy feeling, especially during lunch on a weekday. The tongue was served sliced in a rich tomato sauce, clearly with Panamanian accents, over a bed of spaghetti. Read more…
Panama, Tongue
I first came across guacho (pronounced, WAH-cho) at the fish market in Panama City, where there is a restaurant on a sort of mezzanine sitting above the vendors. Guacho is a rice porridge, almost like a risotto, but made from regular, extra-long grain white rice. The rice is soaked in water for a couple of hours before being simmered in a seafood stock for a few hours, until the grains give up almost all their starch, and expand by about three times. The base flavors come from a sofrito, and the porridge is studded with bite-sized pieces of seafood, mostly shellfish. Guacho is a classic Panamanian dish, usually cooked for holidays (especially lent) and other festive occasions, but some families will chow down on this during once-a-week get togethers. This is a dish from the coastal regions of Panama, where fishermen’s families could stretch a little of bit of their catch into a meal for a large extended family. There are only a few recipes available online, so I took what little information there was, and grafted it to a base of asopao de mariscos recipes I was able to find. Asopao is a rice-based seafood soup found mostly in the Latin Caribbean, and is something I was somewhat familiar with from growing up in NYC. The key here is slowly simmering the rice in the seafood-flavor liquid to coax the starches out of the rice and marry all the flavors. The seafood itself is almost a garnish, put in at the end for just enough time for it to cook through. This is a meal in and of itself, and the only additions I recommend are fresh lime juice and some hot sauce.
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Guacho, Panama, Rice Dish, Seafood
The first thing the sous chefs asked me to cook at Spago during my externship (see my About page for more on that experience) was rice. Luckily, this was the first thing my mom taught me cook, as well. I made a huge pot of soft, fluffy rice as part of family meal for the whole crew. I overheard them commenting that it was pretty good, but a little overcooked. I had left to to sit a bit too long before fluffing it up, but I passed the test. When I cooked this style of rice for my lady, she politely ate it, but I could tell it wasn’t what she was used to. Spending time down in Panama with her parents, I learned that unless the rice has concolón or concho, you are not really eating rice. When I started at them, not finding the translation, they told me, “crunchy.” Read more…
Panama, Rice
This is another dish I hadn’t heard of before I went to Panama. Bistec Picado roughly translates to “Chopped Beef,” but is closer to the pepper steak I had grown up eating in Chinese-Cuban joints in NYC. This dish again shows the mixture of cultures in Panama, using soy sauce from the Chinese migration, and a tomato based sauce with strong flavors from the Caribbean (what the Panamanians called al estillo criolla, meaning the Creole-style.) In Panama, I have found that the meat is usually not as tender or flavorful as I would like, so I did some searching on Cooks Illustrated, and found that they use blade steak in their stir fry recipes. I thought this would work here, because I was using the same technique of cooking the meat in small pieces about 80% of the way, and then finishing it in a sauce built in the same pan in which I sautéed the meat. I like to get my meat from the butcher when I can, starting from as large of a cut as possible. Here, I got a little less than a pound of blade (my butcher calls it chicken steak.) There is a line of connective tissue that runs right through the middle of this piece. Cut the meat into two large chunks at this line, and then trim away the tissue before slicing up for the dish.
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Beef, Panama
Let’s face it, before I went down there, Panama was the land of the Canal and Noriega. I travelled to Panama after taking the New York Bar Exam (which is loads of fun - you should try it out sometime) and before I started my corporate law gig in Midtown Manhattan. I had a friend with an extra room and the desire to travel somewhere I had never been and had never really thought about. The only up-close experience I had with Panamanians at this point was watching the U.S. Men’s National Team beat the Panamanian soccer team at Giant’s Stadium in the final of the Gold Cup (with U.S. fans chanting, “You’re country’s just a shortcut”). I had no itinerray in mind, outside of soaking in sun rays and detoxing the mind after taking the Bar. Read more…
Panama
Sancocho is the chicken noodle soup of Panama, plus the best cure for a long, late night of drinking. Late night stops for a bowl of sancocho reminded me of diner stops in NYC. Old friends meet up and compare notes on clubs and bars at one of the several Niko’s in the city, a cafeteria-style restaurant serving up Panamanian fare from steam tables, open 24-hours, every day. A more specific example of this is when night clubs serve up sancocho at 3AM on New Year’s Eve. My favorite spot, though, is Jap Jap (named after the sound a chicken makes). Jap Jap is an outdoor, large roadside place in Panama City where they sell killer rotisserie cooked chicken and their version of a souvlaki, basically grilled beef on a nice hero-like roll. The sancocho comes in a large styrofoam cup, and consists of pieces of stewed hen sitting in a yucca-thicken broth, studded with culantro. It is pretty hard to spend $10 here – portions are ample and nothing is expensive. This is the kind of fast food the Grub Blogger can approve: Tied to the culture, locally owned and with fresh ingredients. Read more…
Panama, Sancocho
