All who wander...
                           ...no están perdidos
Site Search
  • mi vida
  • Palabra del Día
  • About

Supermercado y Pollo Guisado: cooking Dominican style

7/5/2013

3 Comments

 
I've been wanting to make pollo guisado for quite some time now. Sure sancocho and mofongo are everybody's traditional favorites, but those are your special occasion dishes, your once-every-couple-of-weeks dishes. Pollo guisado, on the other hand, is the every day go-to meal. The people's food. The daily bread of the Dominican diet. Serve it alongside some moro, a fancy way of saying rice and beans, and there is nothing more standard. So of course, I had to learn to make it. 
The adventure began, like all good culinary adventures, at the supermarket. 
Many Dominicans buy their goods from nearby colmados or sometimes passing "marchenas," local women who travel through the streets (usually on donkeys, but sometimes with wheel barrows) shouting out their wares. 
Picture
But if you are looking for a one-stop shop, La Sirena, the closest thing the D.R. has to a Wal-Mart, is the favorite choice of your average middle-class Dominican.  No, you can't bargain for your goods here (darn!), but you get the convenience of finding everything in one place and not having to chase la marchena down the street.  
Plus, air conditioning. 
Those are two very magical words in the D.R. 
Picture
In any case, I snapped some pics to give you an idea of what grocery shopping is like with a tropical flare. You can also get an idea of the prices if you take a look at the signs posted above each item. Just remember that 1 U.S. dollar is about 40 Dominican pesos. So that means 10 pesos= $.25, 20 pesos= $.50, 40 pesos= $1.00, 100 pesos= $2.50, 200 pesos= $5.00, and so on. 
Above, we've got mangos (finally in season, yes!!!!), and zapotes...an odd pumpkin-y fruit. 
Picture
Lechoza, or papaya, is sold year round. It turns nice and yellow when it is ripe. 
Picture
Here we've got chinola, or passion fruit, on the left (It gets all wrinkly when it is ripe), and Dominican oranges, which for some reason, are not orange at all! but rather a mish-mash of orange and green. 
Picture
And of course, this is berenjena, or egg plant, which strangely enough is a very common veggie here and is featured in many traditional Dominican dishes. I never would have guessed that. 
Picture
Now onto the ajies verdes (green peppers) and tomates bugalu (roma tomatoes). I really just took this picture so that I could say bugalu. Best word ever. Bugalu. bugalu. bugalu. bugalu. bugalu. hahaha.
Picture
Next up, the "viveres," which actually translates to "supplies" or "provisions" in English. However, here in the D.R. the word generally refers to root vegetables and plantains. The variety of tubers here far exceeds anything we have in the U.S., and many of their names don´t have English translations (ñame, yautia). What I love about the word viveres is that the word actually stems from the verb "vivir," to live. These are the veggies that Dominicans live on. Cheap and filling, they are usually featured in at least one (but possibly two or three) daily meals for the average Dominican. 
Picture
And of course we have plaintains. Don´t be fooled, they don´t taste a thing like bananas. Both are tough and starchy and nearly impossible to eat raw. They are usually boiled or fried. The green version of course, is less ripe and has a bland potato-y flavor, while the yellow version is mildly sweet. 
Picture
The next isle over we´ll find conflé and leche. The funny thing is, all cereals, from Lucky Charms to Coco Puffs, are referred to as cornflé (cornflakes). And the milk here is often sold in powdered form, as in the Nido brand packages you see above. 
Picture
And we can´t skip the dessert isle! 
Picture
The most common desserts (The ones sold by vendors at the beach or on buses) are dulce de mani (a very sweet peanut brittle), dulce de coco (same concept as the peanut brittle but with coconut flakes), and dulce de leche  (a condensed milk treat). All of these are overpoweringly sugary (but still delicious)-- in true Dominican fashion. The island was initially colonized to grow sugar cane after all!
Picture
Picture
Certainly no Dominican grocery store would be complete without salami. The typical Dominican salami is called longaniza, but there are tons of varieties. Most look, and taste, more like giant seasoned hot dogs than anything else though. Not my style, but if you are a hot dog lover, well the D.R. is the place for you. 
Picture
The eggs are never refrigerated. And look! You can even buy cute little speckled ones!
Picture
And I couldn´t not mention guandules. They are officially called pigeon peas in the U.S. but I´d never heard of them before. Really, they are a bean, not a pea, and they are often served in moro. 
Which brings me back to the pollo guisado with moro! 
Well anyways, I found myself a real Dominican (a friend of mine) and he dragged my all through La Sirena looking for our ingredients.
Picture
Red peppers, green peppers, garlic, onion, celery, cilantro, oregano, tomato paste, soy sauce (salsa china), rice, black beans,  and a whole chicken. 
Picture
First step, hack the chicken into pieces. There does not seem to be a method to this. Just take a sharp knife and go at it! Cut off the excess skin and rinse the pieces in water to clean. 
Picture
Second step, I have no idea. 
I tried to get Diego to explain to me the process paso a paso of making pollo guisado with moro, but that plan did not work out at all.  Turns out Diego is more of a tosser...you know...one of those people that continuously tosses things into a pot until it tastes right. No measurements, no recipe...not even a real method as far as I could see. Part of the veggies went into the pot at the beginning, some of them went in a little later, and some of them went in later still. "Why don´t you put all the veggies in at one time? What are you going to do with these extra veggies?" I kept pestering. But he just laughed and said, "Tranquila!"  Every time I turned around he was tossing something new into one of the pots or asking for another random ingredient. "Do you have olives?" "I need some rum." "Hmmm, more celery I think!" 
Picture
Picture
Finally I just gave up, popped open a cool bottle of wine in the now very steamy kitchen, and took his "tranquila" advice while he did his thing 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
The finished black bean moro, served with red peppers which is not super traditional, just a little bit of Diego flare :)
Picture
I´m not sure how he did it, but he sure did it well! 
Picture
Pollo guisado con moro de habichuelas negras y tostones: Braised chicken with black bean moro and fried plantain chips. Yum!

Since I couldn´t get the whole recipe out of Diego (which makes perfect sense actually, since the D.R. has a primarily oral culture, meaning stories and recipes and traditions are passed down by word or mouth and learning processes rather than written down) I did a little research and found what seems like a really good pollo guisado recipe online. Try it out and let me know what you think!
3 Comments
chloe link
7/11/2013 11:10:45 pm

yum yum yum yum

Reply
fashion designing in jaipur link
9/30/2013 04:31:01 pm

With lots of walking, and potential coo coo temperature changes, Trish had a few outfit requests:

Reply
Molly link
9/30/2013 11:41:46 pm

I'm all ears Trish, what are the requests?

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Author

    Hola! My name is Molly and I was recently hired through the travel abroad company CIEE as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher for the PUCMM, a university located in Santiago, Dominican Republic. Hopefully this blog will give future travelers an insight into teaching abroad, while also helping me log my adventures and stay in touch with friends back home. 

    blog expat

    Archives

    July 2016
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012

    Categories

    All
    Culture/ Cultura
    Food/ Comida
    Musings/ Pensamientos
    Santiago Reviews/revisas
    Travel/ Viajes

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.