Pasteles en Hoja

 Pasteles en Hoja 

      Back Home in Puerto Rico around the holidays, there was nothing more that I loved the most but the beginning of the holidays. On November 1st my family and all families around the neighborhood would put up their decorations and their Christmas tree. One of many traditions in a holiday feast was the Pastel en Hoja I remember when being a kid how my family went crazy over the pasteles these had to be ordered months ahead of time because everybody back home ordered a lot and, not everybody makes pasteles and the people who do only will take a certain amount of orders. These have an important memory that I wanna share with my daughters because whenever this food is smelled in the kitchen you receive that smell and taste of food that lets us know that Christmas is around the corner. 

    
       Ever since we moved to America we have barely seen pasteles during the holidays my mom does not make them and my grandma neither. So I took it upon myself to learn how to make these so I could bring that tradition to my daughters. The process of learning how to make these have been fun and interesting And I got to share this experience with my grandmother. I do admit it took quite a while, I was making pasteles for about 5 hours but, the end result was worth it. The process of making pasteles is long but worth it here is a list of the ingredients in how to make these. 

Ingredients:

• Green Bananas 
• Achiote 
• Banana leaves 
• Pork Shoulder or chicken 
• Seasoning of your choice 
• Pumpkin 
• Yautia Blanca 
• pastel paper and string. 

    The way I started my pasteles was by getting the meat ready by cutting the pork into small squares once the meat was all cut down into squares the next step was to marinate it with the seasoning of choice.  My seasoning choices were minced garlic in oil, sofrito, adobo and, salt after marinating the pork I put it to cook with a little oil for about 1 hour and a half in low fire with the meat I added potatoes.  while the meat was cooking the next step was to hand grade the Pumpkin, Yautia Blanca, and the Green Bananas this was my first time ever making pasteles and I cut myself a couple times with the hand grader and had to through away the mixture once. the mixture also gets a little seasoning once it was finished hand grading and mixed all together I would add adobo, salt, and Achiote oil. It would look something like the picture with the red bowl.  

    It is a lot of work but after the meat is cooked the mixture is made we will start making these into pasteles and for this next step we would need a couple of stuff witch is the banana leave the pasteles paper and the string to tie together. we will with a spoon grab the mixture spread only a little through the banana leave and place the pork on top of this mixture after this we would close it almost like a burrito and tie it with the string as strong as possible. 

    

The pasteles would look something like this when they are done we can either freeze them for a couple of days or we can boil them in water with salt for an hour and when it's done we can open these babies out add a little ketchup and they are good to go. These pasteles in Puerto Rico are considered a side dish in which is cooked mostly through the holidays, it pairs up nicely with some Rice and Pigeonpeas as well as pork. 

    This is a plate of food is a memory of me when a child of traditions of my food in cultural context, I loved spending Christmas as a kid in Puerto Rico Today I learned to make them so my daughter could know and learn about their culture through our food or through our traditions. In other words, is a way for me to keep my traditions and culture alive.

     I think food has a bigger a deeper meaning and for me, food, especially around the holidays, reminds me of my home. And having kids really pushes me to teach them Spanish and teach them their culture to the best of my abilities.

   

    

Here is the link to the video of the pasteles de Hoja: How to Make Puerto Rican Pasteles step by step - YouTube