Advent Calendar: pasteles

Advent Calendar:

Dec 13
PASTELES

Kathryn Miller: I couldn't get to the recipe...stop babbling, pendejo, and re-post the recipe!! I need to make some for this weekend!!

Domingo Soto: click on link, maricona!

Kathryn Miller: I don't need your damned link. I called Consuelo. She said to put raisins in it.

Domingo Soto: LOL

Camille Dauchez: Titi Connie told me to put in capers.
And prunes.

This Facebook exchange on yesterday's Coquito post encapsulates a lot of things about our family, not the least of which is that when you're in this family, it's hard to bail out. The style that we are is contagious, or maybe, as her language would indicate, we just attract kindred spirits. Both Donna and Kathryn are highly loved and continue to be counted as family members. Kathryn has been confronting some major issues on her own but has been a family stalwart, sharing with us all of our crap, good and bad. Our little sister Camille came into the family via Paris, where Carlos spent a summer as part of Kathryn's homespun exchange program. Connie, another ex-pat PPR (Pensacola Puerto Rican), I met through ISA many moons ago and we've been fighting (and loving each other) like brother and sister ever since. The references to raisins, capers, and prunes is about Pasteles. A pastel, as the name indicates, probably comes from the Spanish word for cake (and, probably, due to the coloring of the icing, but I'm just tripping here, don't really know, back to topic). We PRs don't call cakes Pastels. We call Pastels Pastels and cake bizcocho. (And tortas are something else completely, please!) Pastel-colored they are not. They are brown fecal-looking (oh, yum! maybe that's why a lot of kids hate them) tamales. They are made out of a plaintain, yuca, and green banana paste. They have a meat center and are wrapped in paper, banana leaves if you have them available. They are a laborious thing to make and they are usually prepared for the Christmas meal. Now, they have Cuisinarts but when we were little we conscripted into peeling, cutting, and scraping the plaintains, our knuckles bleeding from the rallador into the masa. The ordeal would last for hours. We'd whine and belly ache but it was always one of those meals we all shared with a sense of accomplishment. There's not a PR that doesn't see the pastel as an integral part of the Christmas meal. Pastel recipes are like Gumbo recipes and every family's pasteles are "the best". One year, we PPRs made pasteles and they came out great, except that Connie, Paulie and I would argue about the correct ingredients. Every year since the topic comes up and we revisit it. Connie's heathen family puts raisins (or prunes, can't remember which travesty they commit) in theirs. Some put garbanzos, My mom did them correctly, leaving all of those ingredients out.