So Many Dishes

Since I’ve cooked two dishes in three days that involve shredding meat, I figured it’s a sign that I need to blog about them. Both delicious, one is a dish I make frequently, and the other is something that has become a special occasion meal.

The first shredded meat dish I ever tasted or made was the iconic ropa vieja, one of the national dishes of Cuba. Traditionally made with beef, the meat is cooked with tomato sauce and bell peppers, and then shredded so that it resembles “old clothes,” the literal translation of the name. To my mind, it’s real comfort food—nothing fancy, but delicious and filling.

Because we’ve cut back on red meat, I haven’t made ropa vieja in several years. Instead, I make Colombian shredded chicken, a dish I first discovered in Steve Rachlein’s Healthy Latin Cooking. In many ways it’s a chicken version of ropa vieja. Because it’s made with skinless, boneless chicken breasts, it’s much leaner than its beef counterpart. It also cooks more quickly, so it’s been a weeknight staple. I generally serve it with white rice and either black beans or red beans.

The special occasion shredded meat meal is an Italian recipe, pot roast pasta, from The New Basics cookbook by Silver Palate authors Jules Rosso and Sheila Lukins. It’s a version of a stracatto, an Italian slow cooked stew. It takes several hours to make, but it isn’t hard to do, and the results are worth the investment of time and energy.

The reason I made pot roast pasta today was because we had our “first Christmas” celebration. Grandson Luke spends Christmas with his dad and paternal grandmother in New York, so we always do an early celebration, exchanging gifts and having dinner together with Luke, Alice, and Dante beforehand. Alice requested pot roast pasta, and I was happy to oblige.

I have made this for actual Christmas dinner, but not in a number of years. We vary the menu for Christmas dinner each year, and I’m not sure if I’ve made this on Christmas since the year that Ken got the flu on Christmas Eve. That’s more than 15 years ago, since it’s definitely before Ben was married. Poor Ken was miserable. He couldn’t play drums at church in Christmas Eve, so Ben filled in for him. He managed to get out of bed and sat at the table with us for dinner, but just ate plain pasta. It was also memorable because Ben helped me cook the pasta. There’s a half cup of red wine in the sauce, but somehow he and I managed to finish off the bottle before dinner 😊 Did I mention that the sauce cooks for a long time? Nothing like that happened today.

We had a wonderful celebration. The pasta was a hit, accompanied by a green salad with homemade vinaigrette. I had made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for dessert, as they are Dante’s favorite. No one really wanted to move from the table. After eating three helpings of pasta, Luke was having a hard time staying awake.

I will post the recipes in a separate post tomorrow, because I really don’t have any more energy than my grandson!

Happy eating!