Tonight! Pork pernil with mofongo, garlicky green beans, and leftover arroz con gandules!
The pork after 2 hours under a foil tent to try to preserve moisture and then 2 hours uncovered, including a final 20m at a higher temp (recipes
heavily disagreed on this step, so I went half with-foil and half without).
The pernil after I foolishly tried to crisp up some of the less-crispy skin near the “back” portion by broiling it–on the very bottom rack and only for 90 seconds mind–and wound up making some of the skin bubble up like pork cracklins (which, in fairness, it basically is.
Bowl of the green beans I made: mortar-and-pestled some garlic and aji dulces–sweet peppers–then mixed in a basic vinaigrette of olive oil and vinegar with salt and pepper. Blanched the green beans, drained, and let em cool, then mixed 'em in.
Final plate: last night’s arroz con gandules, the green beans, a helping of the pork, including a slice of the skin, and then a mound of mofongo–fried green plantains mortar-and-pestle’d with garlic, oregano, salt, Adobo, and actual pork cracklins, shaped, and then doused in some of the leftover liquid in the pernil pan.
Overall, despite my fuckup with the broiler and accidentally cutting off from the saltiest part of the pernil (at the bottom of my marinade bowl, I found a big pile of barely-mixed-in salt and, being at my wit’s end from handling such a huge piece of raw meat and the sloppy, slimy marinade in a too-small roasting tray, I just dumped it on, wearily smeared at it for a few seconds, and left it be overnight, so the part where that salt-glob hit is a real sodium-bomb), tonight’s supper was absolutely incredible.
10/10, would Puerto Rico again.
