The October Itinerary - Puerto Rico

I loved reading Mia’s stories about the origins of these recipes in her abuela Sara’s kitchen. The combination of flavors from the three cultures that heavily influenced Puerto Rican cuisine - Taíno, Spanish, and African - creates truly interesting dishes that I’m really looking forward to exploring alongside you this month.

Before each month starts, I’m going to lay out the structure of content on my side, so that if you want to cook through the same recipes, you can begin to gather your supplies. I’ll also call out any unique ingredients it might be helpful to seek out. Of course, these are just some of the recipes I’m excited about. I encourage you to pick your favorites from the book if these aren’t your preference! Sharing what you made, what worked, and what you’d change will hopefully inspire our ongoing investigation of this cookbook.

The October Itinerary:

Week 1: Quesitos con miel y sal de mar (p. 97)

Week 2: Pernil asado con cuerito (p. 235)

Week 3: Picadillo + Pastelón de Amarillo (p. 260, p. 255)

Week 4: Arroz con dulce con ron y pasas (p. 289)

I may throw in a few additional recipes here and there if I have a little more time, or if you guys try anything you think is a total winner, but this will be the bones of the month.

Helpful ingredients to have on hand:

On the whole, I found the ingredients in Cocina Puerto Rico to be really accessible, which makes this book a pleasure to cook from. Nearly all the recipes I tried contained items found at your typical grocery store. There are a few things I want to call out, just in case you are in an area with limited access. These are ingredients that are used across many recipes, so even if you don’t choose to cook the exact same ones I am, it’s likely you’ll come across these items.

Adobo: Mia includes a recipe to make your own, which is so incredibly simple. My grocery store also had this on hand. It’s something I didn’t have in my pantry already, but I went ahead and grabbed some so I didn’t need to add the extra step of preparing it.

Guava paste: my typical grocery store didn’t have this on hand, but I actually stumbled across it at World Market. I also think this would be relatively easy to find at your local Hispanic grocery store. If none of these work for you, it can easily be found on Amazon.

Plantains: these are easy to find at my Walmart, but in case they aren’t in stock at yours, try a Hispanic grocery store!

Bone-in, skin-on pork butt: oof, I didn’t know how difficult this would be for me to find, or I would have done better planning. I called several grocery stores and local butchers, but wasn’t able to locate any. This may be something that’s better to special order. The skin is such an important part of Mia’s recipe, and I’m sad I missed it.

I’m working on getting a forum up and running on theedibleitinerary.com, so stay tuned for that! In the meantime, we’ll live in the comment sections of social media and Substack until we have a dedicated space to chat back and forth.

Throughout the month, share what you’re cooking with the group by tagging @theedibleitinerary on the social media of your choice or using the hashtag #theedibleitinerary!

Thank you for joining me!