Sancocho!

A new vegan delicacy in my kitchen. Kids love it, BTW.

For the last day of winter, the kids and I created a warm and delicious sancocho, a stew that I first learned about while living in Santo Domingo.  The stew is rich and creamy and contains a medley of soothing starches like yucca, yautia (we used yams), plantain, and potato.  There’s something truly marvelous about the soothing quality of starches.  While they lamented the absence of meat, di youth nonetheless indulged in the sancocho, going for bowl after bowl as they praised the recipe and the cooking class!  Even my director noted that there was something addictive about it.  Just for the record, I broke down and bought them some tofurkey ground beef, which gave a nice texture to the vegan dish, though I generally avoid soy products.

The best part of creating this recipe was coming to understand how the creaminess is achieved.  I doubted that it could ever be made vegan when I first tried it.  But to my surprise the creamy consistency comes from pureeing and boiling green bananas.  I predict that I will be serving this dish A LOT in the near future despite the warm weather on the horizon.  The recipe and lesson plan is here.