When exploring culinary Puerto Rico, what better place to start than a market?
And who better to serve as our guide than Wilo Benet,
a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, and one of the island's premier chefs
whose restaurant Pikayo is a beacon to all who visit in search of the tastes of Puerto Rico.
He'll give us a basic course in the Puerto Rican market basket at the Plaza del Mercado,
a small, but lively market in the Santurce area of San Juan.
Here, we get our first look at the bounty of this region where sometimes the freshest ingredients,
like bananas and avocados, are growing outside the back door.
[Chef Wilo Benet] Lots of things going on around. It's getting close to the weekend, but here we are!
And this is actually Plaza del Mercado de Santurce,
which is the principal produce market where you'll find all the staples
and certainly all the ingredients to cook, you know, most of the traditional Puerto Rican recipes.
So.... let's take a look!
Actually, let me show you one of these things that we're going to be using in one of the recipes later on.
Um..... Actually the Aji Dulce,
which is funny, because sometimes.... And *most* of the times, they *are* sweet,
but from time to time, you find one out of nowhere, that will really bite you good.
Uh.....And then we have these, which are called "Caballero Chilis,"
which are the most traditionally used for making hot sauce or "pique," as we call....
Which are usually presented in glass flasks, um.....
Then, another one of the particular peppers of the culture is the "cubanelle pepper."
Which is elongated, a little bit more [......], definitely one of the things we'll use to make sofrito.
Later on, it will give it a very particular.....particular taste.
This is the local avocado, which is a little bit bigger.
Not as creamy and oily as a Hass avocado, for instance.
So kind of a little bit more on the watery side, if you will.
Um, but um....Avocado very popular here as a side, a compliment.
You know, you get, like, root vegetables, and salt cod, and a slice of avocado with some olive oil, and salt.....
Um.... You're asking me about the Chayote Squash. These are actually.....
Uh.....very traditional here. And probably it's most.... The most popular recipe is.... they get boiled first....
Halved, pit removed, and then they remove all of the meat,
kind of like mash it, mix it together with ground beef....
Lay it back in the shell, put it in the oven, sometimes a little cheese on top....
.....And you know that that constitutes the most popular recipe for using these.
So, here we have a great variety of the roots or tubers,
that are so important in our diet.
And that we use them all over the place.
Like, for instance, you have cassava, which is
becoming very popular in the States now, for a variety of things. Certainly make great chips.
And actually a great on Escabeche.
And then you have taro, as you see it here.... Or pardon, I'm sorry, this is called ñame.
Which is some kind of, like, white.... But it has a brittle texture to it, when you when you boil it off.
Then you have what is called "Tiny Ear" or "yautía."
And then we have the white kind, and then we have the purple kind. And it's kind of like a....
Like a light purple, you know, it's not like deep purple colors.
Same flavor, just different color.
Then you have taro, which the Chinese use tremendously.
So, we're no exception to that.
We have regular potatoes and sweet potatoes.
And! Finally! We get to what I feel is the king of all tubers!
Which is called "Apio." And if you are to translate this to English, it would be "celery."
I don't know why they call it that, because it's not celery root,
but probably it looked like it at some point, and that's where it come from. But.....
It is the most expensive, the less yielding, the hardest to peel....However, I think it's got the most distinctive flavor.
And like my friend Michael Lomonaco said, it has a little bit of, um.....
Kind of like artichoke of flavor. Like Jerusalem artichoke, or even like regular artichokes, in in some ways.
A little cod, a little avocado, some pieces of this, and a good olive oil and salt. And we're all set.
[Jessica Harris, Narrator] The Plaza del Mercado is the equivalent of a small neighborhood market.
It's a place to meet neighbors for a chat and a beer.
Or maybe purchase a lottery ticket while selecting the ingredients for the night's dinner.
The Rio Piedras Market, San Juan's major market, has a brisker pace.
One that speaks to markets as hubs of Commerce and Industry.
There's no time for a leisurely stroll here.
We meet up with chef and restaurateur, Alfredo Ayala,
one of the innovators of the "nueva cocina puertorriqueña,"
who introduces us to more of Puerto Rico's produce,
including the West Indian cooking pumpkin known as "calabaza,"
chilies, okra,
and seasonal treats, like gandules or pigeon peas,
that are being shelled in time for Christmas use in a special version of rice and beans called "arroz con gandules."
There are also the banana leaves that will be used to wrap the holiday pasteles.
A savory mixture of diced pork meat, beans, and yautía masa, that's wrapped in a banana leaf.
At the Rio Piedras Market, we learn that some markets in the region are not only shopping spots,
but are often major eating spots, as well.
In Rio Piedras, the stalls on the edge of the market offer patrons samples of traditional specialties like roast pork,
and the tripe stew called "mondongo," that is a well known Puerto Rican hangover cure.