Week 5: Salsa Dancing in Puerto Rico
I could probably write about a million things in regards to Puerto Rico. I’m pretty much and expert of all things Puerto Rican since I married one. I’m also like 25% Puerto Rican, but until I married one, I had no prior knowledge of the food, culture, or history. The German side of me took over, but the Puerto Rican side laid dormant until the day of reckoning when I met my wife. She woke up the sleeping Giant in me and all of the sudden my hips starting moving in ways I didn’t know possible. Now granted…even though my hips were moving, they were in no way, shape, or form recognizable from any pure breed Rican. I looked like a white dude trying to keep an imaginary hoola hoop up around my waist.
All joking aside, the Puerto Rican culture is a wonderful one. While I love their food, I love most the people. Puerto Ricans love to throw a party, which always involves tons of food, music, and dancing. If they aren’t having an afternoon party, they are all sitting on the porches, eating fresh fruit, telling stories, jokes, and watching the little ones gather around Abuela (grandma) while she sneaks them money or treats.
I think our American society has a lot to learn from this. We get so busy and forget our friends and family. We have so much to entertain us that doesn’t involve people. I know every time I get together with friends; we laugh so hard we have a headache afterwards. We make great memories which we talk about for years to come, but what gets said after every get together? “We have to do this more often!” Then 6-8 months go by and nothing happens.
This happened to us these past couple weeks. I know I haven’t been writing the blog. We had family visit which was wonderful, but then we had a couple other things happen and the next thing you know it’s been 4 weeks since we’ve had an At Home Date Night. I understand how easy it is to fall back into the norm. Don’t let this happen. Get back on the horse and start making your relationship with your spouse a top priority, and all your friends and family. You will start to be a much more satisfied and happier person for it and you will grow real relationships that will last a lifetime.
Ok, on to the At Home Date Night. I have to apologize in advance. I begged my wife to make Mofongo with her special chicken. She usually only makes it for my birthday because it takes a lot of time, but you aren’t getting mofongo. I am sorry for that. I used all my swagger and charm, but if a Rican woman doesn’t want to do something, it isn’t happening.
You won’t miss out though, we had a triple A dinner which you will definitely want to make, and our activity was free, but provided an insane amount of laughter…with a little bit of pain. For the appetizer we decided to make a staple in Puerto Rican culture, Puerto Rican Beef Pastelillo. Once you make this dish you will make it all the time. It’s quick, easy, and full of flavor. For the main dish I went all out with Churrasco Skirt Steak with chimichurri sauce and tostones. I’ve never made a skirt steak Puerto Rican style before and since my wife told me that nobody has ever made her a better churrasco steak than her mother, I had my work cut out for me.
I was going to say the night started rough, but I’ve noticed all our date nights start off this way. I believe there are powers at work that do not want your marriage to work out. This is why it’s so important to have date night, even when you don’t want to or you are upset with your spouse about something. I can’t even remember why we were upset with each other; all I know is something happened earlier in the day or I must have brought something up that caused a problem. Either way, the date night started off with tensions high. Neither one of us were dressed for date night. We were kind of just going through the motions and not really talking. We started to argue about whatever the topic was and of course I won the argument, well, in my mind I won the argument but it really set a bad tone for the first 20 minutes.
We weren’t talking to each other. She was cooking the meat and I was prepping my dish. Finally, she turned to me and said, “let’s just stop this, we are here to have a good time and get closer to one another.”
My wife is so sensible. She has this gift of de-escalating a situation. I turned to her and said, “I’m sorry, I love you so much.” She says, “I know you do, now come here.” GRRRRRRR….She was supposed to say I LOVE YOU TOO !! this of course lead us both into laughing quite hard but then hugging and having a wonderful rest of the night.
We started talking again and the past was the past. Time to move on because we have a big night ahead of us involving dance. My wife needed her rest and motivation because teaching some white dude to salsa dance is quite the feat. Ok, teaching a white guy how to dance to any kind of music is quite the project. I don’t know what it is, why is it so hard for white dudes to dance. It’s like we have this awkward body movement gene that we’ve passed on from generation to generation that doesn’t allow our hips to sync up with the rhythm. My wife humors me though. I know enough which she has taught me so I can get by, but not to Ricans, they know I have no idea what I’m doing. Only other rhythmless white dudes and white chicks are fooled.
Tonight, we were attempting salsa again. She has taught me Bachata, and Merengue, but Salsa is my enemy. I just can’t get it, and it’s the one I wish I could do the most. I’ve watched her uncle dance or other Puerto Rican men dance at weddings and they are barely moving, but it looks awesome.
She is going to help me, and I hope we can help give you guys and girls some tools to learn at home. Don’t fool yourself though, you are going to look awful doing this unless you have Hispanic blood of some sort coursing through you. What I promise is some enormous belly laughs and sore hips.
While my wife was cooking her dish, my oldest son comes down and says, “I smell something Puerto Rican.” The last time he was in Puerto Rico was ten years ago. He has no idea what Puerto Rico smells like, but even though he doesn’t know, he wasn’t wrong. He starts dancing because that’s just what he does. Unfortunately, even though he is more Puerto Rican than German, he can’t dance. I’m hoping he marries a Rican too and further purifies the blood line. Maybe his children will have hope.
My wife finished her dish and since we had enough pastelillos we gave the kids some and sent them off to bed.
My dish was taking a lot longer and needed a lot of focus. Instead of grilling the steak I decided to make it in a cast iron skillet. Sometimes in a cast iron skillet there can be a lot of smoke. You want to get that pan super-hot to get a nice sear on the steak. I had marinated the steak overnight so the smell of it filled up the whole house. It was glorious. I laid the steak away from me like Master Ramsey has taught. The kitchen began to fill with white smoke. So much so it was starting to hurt my wife’s eye’s and I new it was getting ready to set off the smoke alarms.
We opened all the windows and doors and I started to franticly use a towel to fan away the smoke from the alarms. Such a romantic night.
I love the cast iron skillet, but it will produce a lot of smoke sometimes. Even though there was a lot of smoke the steak actually came out perfect. It wasn’t burnt at all. I pulled it out and let it rest and made the chimichurri and my wife and I both made the Tostones.
We sat down to eat and the food was amazing. I asked if I passed the test and made it better than her mom did. She said, “It’s not better than my mom’s, it’s good, but different.” I can take that. She still gave the meal a 10 out of 10. Don’t skip the chimichurri sauce. It’s amazing and really good with a flank or skirt steak.
It was time for our activity and my wife had found some free tutorials online which she thought were really good for a beginner. She is no beginner, but she humors me and always tries to deal with my two left feet. She found a couple of the videos and we started to watch them. Then I remembered my mom and dad used to take dancing lessons. I love my dad to death. He is amazing and I respect him so much and am so thankful for everything he taught me, but my dad doesn’t have a dancing bone in his body. He tries but it’s just like watching a piece of dead wood bobbing up and down in the ocean. I remember when he wanted to show my wife and I some of his salsa moves from class. The worst part was he thought he was doing a good job. I didn’t have the heart to break his spirit because he seemed so proud of himself. So, I started imitating it to my wife and we couldn’t stop laughing. Of course I was exaggerating how bad it was. She started imitating some people she had saw dance at a wedding recently and we both couldn’t stop laughing.
Ok, time to get serious and learn something useful. The videos were pretty good and we put on some salsa music and tried them out. I was still a train wreck and just couldn’t get it, but now we have something we can practice with. My youngest one comes down out of bed because he knows we are dancing. Now every time my wife and I start to dance he will immediately drop whatever he is doing and slither his way between us so I’m kicked out, and he is dancing with her. Now he doesn’t look at her while he is dancing. He looks directly at me with his eye’s saying, “You know you were replaced, why don’t you accept it.”
Of course, my wife loves it because he is her precious baby. All I’m thinking is, “I can’t wait for you to do something wrong so I can give you a massive cocotaso!” If you don’t know what cocotaso I’ll just leave you with these two images:
Now I’ve only seen this in real life one time. It’s the only time I needed to see it. I can tell you that kid did not step out of line for the rest of the day.
After they were done dancing he ran back up stairs to bed and we were able to continue our night. We put on some Bachata to finish the night off, but it was hurting my hip like crazy. Getting old sucks. My wife couldn’t believe I was in so much pain. I mean, I am a man so the tiniest bid of pain or discomfort pretty much means the end of the world is nigh. We were both pretty tired though and breathing heavy. I think we danced to maybe 3 or 4 songs. We were out of shape, but it didn’t matter. We had a wonderful night even though the night started off with us upset at each other, it ended up with us more in love and thankful for the time we had together.
I said, “I’ve still got a little hip strength in me, probably 20 minutes worth.” She said, “20 minutes, maybe 15 years ago, you look like you have about 1 minute of hip strength.” I said, “Deal.”
I hope you enjoy following along with our At Home Date Nights. We encourage you to do this on your own. You will see a difference in your relationship, I promise. Let us know in the comments how your date nights are turning out. Also, we post updates in our Facebook group, Instagram, twitter. You can find those links to the right under the “About Us” section.
Thank you again and remember, your marriage is worth it !!
Appetizer Cost: $15.00
Main Course Cost: $21.50
Activity Cost: $0
Week 4 Total At Home Date Night Cost: $ 36.50
Puerto Rican Beef Pastelillo
Equipment
- Puerto Rican Grandmother
Ingredients
- 10-15 Green Olives Manzanilla
- 1 lb Ground Beef, 93/7
- ⅛ tsp Garlic Powder
- ⅛ tsp Onion Powder
- ¼ tsp Adobo
- 1 pkg Sazon
- ⅛ tsp salt
- ⅛ tsp pepper
- 1 pkg Flour Round Discos Goya, found in frozen aisle
- 1 tbsp Sofrito
Instructions
- Ok, the best way to make this is to talk to a Puerto Rican mom or even better a grandma. Abuela is what you should call her. Don't ask her for her recipe, invite her over to teach you how to properly season ground beef. She will open your mind up to a whole new world of flavor.
- Ok, if you can't find an Abuela, then grab the ingredients up top and let's attempt to channel our inner Puerto Rican. I'm 2% so it should be easy. To the side is a picture of some of the brands we normally use.
- Here is a picture of the Discos you need to buy. They are usually in the frozen food aisle. Make sure to not buy these last minute. Leave them in the fridge overnight so they thaw out.
- chop in half around 10-15 olives. I'm not a big olive lover, but my wife is so I think she added more. No worries though. This is the one dish I actually like having the olives in. It just adds a different flavor to the whole dish.
- Place a frying pan on medium high heat. When it's hot go ahead and add in the ground beef, all the spices and brown the meat mixture. Once it's browned go ahead and add in the chopped up olives.
- Keep cooking the ground beef until it's completely cooked through. While it's cooking you want heat up a large frying pan to 375°. If you plan on making the same dinner, you already need this. I do recommend a deep fat fryer for this, but it doesn't matter if you don't have one. You can still use a frying pan, it just has to have enough oil in it for the Pastelillo's to be half way submerged.
- Once the meat is done lay the discos out and put the mixture in the middle
- Then fold it in half pinching together the outer edges with a fork on both sides. Make sure these are sealed. If you don't when you go to fry them they will open up and the oil will get inside and well, Mamita will not be very happy.
- The package of discos has these little sheets that separate the discos. Just use them to keep your pastelillos from sticking to each other.
- Once the oil is ready, go ahead and dump 2 in the oil. Flip them over after about 30-60 seconds. then let them cook again until you start to see it browning nicely.
- Pull them from the oil and let them sit on a paper towel for about 5-10 minutes to cool down. Then enjoy a nice little appetizer before the main course. You will be tempted to eat like 4 of them. Don't do this because Abuelita will give you a cocotazos if you ruin your dinner.
Notes
Churrasco Skirt Steak w/ Chimichurri Sauce and Tostones
Ingredients
Skirt Steak Marinade
- 2 lbs Skirt Steak or Flank Steak
- ¼ cup Orange Juice 1 orange fresh squeezed
- 2 Limes fresh squeezed
- ¼ cup Cilantro, fresh finely chopped
- 5 Garlic cloves finely chopped
- ⅔ cup Olive oil
- 1 tbsp Cumin, ground
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Pepper
Chimichurri
- 1 Bunch Flat Leaf Parsley or Italian Parsley finely chopped, no stems
- ½ Bunch Fresh Cilantro finely chopped, no stems
- 5 Garlic Cloves
- ½ Shallot
- 1 tbs crushed red pepper flakes
- ¼ cup red wine vinegar
- 2 slices Lemon Juice Fresh squeezed
- ⅛ tsp dried oregano
- ½ cup Olive oil
- ¼ tsp salt more or less to taste
- ¼ tsp Pepper more or less to taste
Tostones
- 2 Green Plantains
- Veggie or Canola oil for frying
Instructions
- The night before home date night make the skirt steak marinade. You want it to sit overnight in the fridge. It will help to tenderize the meat.
- Take the steak and either put it into a zip lock back or in a bowl which you can cover. We used skirt steak because traditional this is the type of steak that is used in Puerto Rico, or so google told me this. I haven't tried it with Flank steak yet, but I will and let you know how it tastes.
- Fresh squeeze the orange and limes and add to the steak. Chop up the cilantro and the garlic and add with the steak. Add everything else and mix it around really good. I've made this in a bowl and a zip lock bag. I think it works better in the zip lock bag. Mine has pineapple in it too, but you don't have to use this. Stick it in the fridge overnight or let it marinate for 8 hours.
- When it's time for Home date night go ahead and take the steak out of fridge and lets make the chimichurri sauce
- Pull the leaves off the cilantro and the parsley and add them to a blender or food processor. Add the garlic, shallot, red pepper, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, oregano, salt, and pepper and just pulse the blender until it's chopped up some. Slowly add in the olive oil pulsing the blender. You don't want to just kick it on high, then your chimichurri will come out like soup. You want it to have some texture so just pulse it and taste it until you like the consistency. If you need to add more salt just go for it.
- In a deep fat fryer or frying pan heat up some oil to 375°. While it's heating up go ahead and peel the green plantains and cut into 1 inch pieces. They can be tricky to peel, so cut down the longer end with a knife and use the blade of the knife to pry apart the skin to get it started. Then under running water you can peel off the rest. Invite a Puerto Rican over to your house to show you how it's done.
- Ok, since we want this to all come out hot at the same time you need to start the steak before starting the Tostones. Tostones need to be eaten right away. They usually don't taste good after 20 minutes or so since they've been made. They are best right out of the fryer.
- In a cast iron skillet or large frying pan, heat the skillet up until you start to see a tiny bit of smoke coming off of it. You don't need to add any olive oil. Just pull the steak from the marinade and let it cook. You might have to cut it in half so the whole thing fits in your skillet. Cook on each side for 5-6 minutes for medium rare. If you have a thicker piece maybe more time. Don't start the 2nd part of the tostones until you are pulling the steak out to let it rest.
- While the steak is cooking add the cut green plantains to the oil. Let them cook on each side until they start to brown and then pull them off to the side. Add more of them each time until they are all browned.
- Once they are all browned you can either use two plates or what I call, a tostones maker, to smash the fried plantains into 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick flat pieces. The steak should be done before you place them back into the fryer. let the steak rest for a minimum of 10 minutes.
- use a spatula to get them off and then add them back to the fryer
- Cook the tostones for around 2 minutes or until golden brown. When finished pull them out and place them on some paper towels.
- Once the steak is done resting go ahead and cut it into 1/2 slices with the grain of the meat. This make it easier on the person that is eating it. Then plate up your dinners by adding the chimichurri to the steak and enjoy an amazing meal with the person you love. We also used the chimichurri with the tostones. It was so unbelievably good.
Notes
At Home Salsa Dancing Lessons:
I’m not going to pretend I have any idea how to help you out of this. Here is the video we used. Then just ask Alexa or Google to play salsa by Gilberto Santa-Rosa, or google someone else.
Ladies, let the man lead, it will be so much better. You gotta give him some power. If you are a Rican trying to teach a white dude this is going to be super difficult. Firstly because he is white. Second because you can’t even give the slightest inclination that you are weak. Give him lots of encouragement. Men needs lots and lots of coaching and encouragement. We are like puppies, we need to be told ” Good Job” like every 2 seconds. Oh, and we love treats…lots of treats.
This one below I added for the LOLs