For me, the point of any holiday worth celebrating is getting together with family, and the glorious food.
And while I sometimes tend to giving nouveau twists to family holiday menus (i.e. Christmas Day Dominican-style Chinese fried rice made with lechón leftover from Nochebuena), there are some standbys that I will love till the day I die. In the González households, no major celebration can pass without pastelitos and potato salad (how potato salad became a Dominican staple is beyond me, but there it is).
A favorite Easter DR treat is one I sometimes have a hard time explaining to non-Dominicans (even other Latins): habichuelas con dulce.
This sweet, a sort of cinnamon-infused bean-based soup, is eaten during Holy Week and at no other time of the year (except in El Alto, where you can buy it year-round from Nena la Rubia, a sidewalk vendor on St. Nicholas and 181st St.). I haven't run across a dish like it in any other Latin American cuisine, and Cubans and Puerto Ricans, our closest culinary relatives, always raise a quizzical eyebrow when I bring it up.
I've outgrown the taste for many cavity-inducing Dominican sweets, including the fudge-like dulce de leche and several types of fruits preserved in syrup. But I still crave habichuelas con dulce, maybe because, despite Nena, it really belongs to a particular time of the year.
I also like taking an everyday ingredient and presenting it in an unexpected way. And I love the little surprises it contains: the bits of sweet potato and raisins and the little sweet round crackers stamped with a cross that are floated on top.
Making beans sweet is not unique to wacky Dominicans, but mostly it's an Asian thing. Think of Japanese sweets made with red bean paste, and the lovely horn of plenty that is Malaysian ABC.
But I wonder where the specific Dominican dish came from. Historian José Guerrero has an elaborate origin story that involves migrants from the Haitian side and an adaptation of French "frijoles azucarados," which sounds a little odd. I smell a culinary research project!
If I ever opened a haute Dominican resto, I would make a dessert that plays with the idea of HcD. Either an ice cream (which Helados Bon in the DR makes seasonally) or a sort of deconstruction, separating out the beans, the cookies, raisins and sweet potato.
The Daily News ran a story about HcD in this month's Viva section, and it includes a recipe.
Here is a recipe I tweaked from the one Tía Clara has on her Dominican cooking website:
Ingredients
2 cups of red beans
2 cinnamon sticks
10 cloves
5-6 grains of allspice
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup coconut milk
3 cups milk
salt to taste
1/2 cup sweet potatoes, chopped into 1" cubes
1/4 cup golden raisins
garnish: casabe or little cross cookies.
Cook beans in about 4 cups of water, adding one of the cinnamon sticks and half the cloves and allspice. Once cooked till soft, drain beans, reserving 2 cups of the cooking water. In a blender, mix beans and water into a thin purée (I like to hold some beans aside for the sake of texture). Place bean purée and half the cow's milk in a heavy-bottomed pot at medium heat. When it begins to boil, add the rest of the cow's milk, salt, sugar, raisins and sweet potato, lower heat to a simmer and cook for about 15-20 min., until sweet potatoes are cooked. Stir regularly so the bottom doesn't scorch. Add remainder of spices and coconut milk and cook until thickened. Allow to cool in the refrigerator at least an hour before serving with toasted pieces of casabe or little cookies floating on top.
[HcD illustration by John Coulter via his blog; Galletitas de leche Guarina pix via La Central Express]
While I've never cared to partake, better habichuelas con dulce than, say, chocolate bunnies to commemorate Easter, anyday.
Posted by: Kiko Jones | March 23, 2008 at 07:26 PM