Dominican Republic: Esther

Pollo Guisado con Moro
[skip to the recipe]

I knock on the door and am quickly greeted by Esther, a dimly lit living room in the background. I had originally planned on filming the session, but I quickly feel like it may be distracting: worrying about what you look like, what the food looks like, if everything is clean and set up, and anything else that only really starts to freak you out when the camera is on you. I level with her. I’m hungover -- I’d like to have a conversation while we cook and see how everything turns out. Let’s just focus on talking and cooking. Everything else should be secondary.

The kitchen is quiet. Ingredients are shuffling around, cutting boards are being placed on the counter, and there’s a plethora of pots on the stovetop. Esther is calm and reserved. There is a quiet kindness about her that allows me to ease right into her kitchen. I ask about the pots resting above her stove. She proudly explains each one to me, carefully noting the cultures from which them came. Alexa joins us, pours a glass of white wine and stands by. I’m excited to get started and I ask if there’s anything I can do to help set up. Instead, I’m offered a bowl of bright green broccoli soup and merengue típico starts to play through the speakers.

When we’re ready to get started, I’m handed a pilon with a head of garlic that’s been peeled and tossed inside. To me, this pilon is a wooden mortar and pestle, except it runs much deeper than a standard wooden or ceramic mortar. The pilon we’re using is over 30 years old, a gift from her wedding. I ask if it’s a traditional wedding gift but the answer is no, not really, it’s just a staple for your kitchen, the way you’d receive a toaster or blender as an American.

Esther pulls out a recycled spice bottle filled with Dominican oregano. We pour a hefty amount on top and season with a bit of salt before she starts rhythmically mashing the ingredients together. “Here,” she says as she shoves the pilon my way, “you want to try?” I start to smash, and Esther tells me the oregano is straight from the Dominican Republic. It’s different from italian oregano, and this version is en polvo, intensely powdered. We’re making the sofrito, she explains, the base of most Dominican food. Each Latinx culture has their own version of sofrito, with most containing very similar ingredients. The sofrito we’re making contains only garlic, oregano, and salt, but will be added to two dishes with peppers, onions, and cilantro, which are typically found in other sofritos.

I’m still smashing at the garlic. Alexa jokes I need to think of something I’m frustrated about -- and while there are thousands of things I’m frustrated about at any given moment -- I never seem to smash hard enough, and eventually give the pilon back to Esther with a withered look upon my face. She smiles, and continues smashing until the paste in the pilon looks as if we’d put it in the blender. 

We add diced onion and pepper into a large soup pot with about half an inch of oil coating the bottom. Once it starts to heat up, we add about two tablespoons of sofrito and two of tomato paste. Excited, Esther grabs a ziplock bag from the freezer, and crumbles something green in the pot. “Cilantro from my garden,” she explains, “If you wash it and dry it, throw it in the freezer, you won’t lose any flavor.” I also notice she doesn’t have to spend any time chopping it up. The greens crumble at her fingers and fall into the pot. 

We let the pot start to sizzle and talk about our love of herb stems, the most flavorful part of the plant. “Don’t waste my cilantro!” Esther exclaims proudly as she drops one last stem into the pot. I agree whole-heartedly. Use the entirety of your vegetables! And if you can’t in that moment, toss them into a bag and freeze them to use for stock later. As the volume of the sizzle creeps up, Esther asks me to rinse the beans. We rinse them right in the can to prevent wasting any dishes, but you can rinse them in a colander if you’d like. 

Once the beans are rinsed, we toss them into the pot, stir in 6 cups of water, and use tasting spoons to check for salt levels. (The Moro water doesn’t need to be too salty, I learn later, because the chicken is so acidic and moist and salty that the rice absorbs it and doesn’t need it on its own. Slightly under salt here, and you can always salt later.) We cover the liquid, and give it time to come to a boil. 

While we wait for the rice to boil, Esther washes the chicken. I ask why she washes her meat. I ask if it’s cultural, a symptom of growing and living in a culture that is farm to table by nature and not trend. She says no. It’s dirty, and we have to clean it. When I ask if we’ll remove the skin (because I am assuming the dish is wet and it will get gelatinous), she asks what I’d like to do. Am I being tested? My answer is yes, remove it. She nods her head in agreement. 

Throughout most of the session, Esther asks how I’d like the meal to be prepared, even though I am there to learn from her. Regardless of insisting I’d like to get a feel for her thinking in the kitchen, we kept coming back to what my preferences were. Treating me with hospitality and ensuring the food we create is something I will enjoy, is cultural. Her greatest joy will come from my satisfaction with the end result. 

She removes the skin from the chicken thighs with a paring knife, as the water begins to boil in the background. This is ritualistic: cut skin, peel back, toss, chicken thigh hits the metal bowl. Her hands are graceful. I talk about drumsticks and how they’re too wet for me -- the thigh is the hidden gem of chicken. For her, it’s always been the natural choice. 

We add the rice to the boiling pot and Alexa mentions that some people won’t touch their rice at all while it cooks, and may even add a paper bag on top to keep the steam in. Esther likes to touch her rice, adding it to the boiled down liquid, stirring, and letting it come to a boil again before covering and moving it to a back burner to simmer. We don’t set a timer.

Esther turns my attention to the chicken. I hear her call me as she pours a splash of apple cider vinegar over the chicken, then adding the sofrito. When I ask Esther how much sofrito to add, she waves her hand and tells me, “that’s a personal thing.” I can feel a smile overwhelm my face. We only add a little bit here, and save some to add in later when it will get less cooking time. 

“No oil?” I ask.

“No,” Esther says.

“The oil will come,” Alexa laughs in the background.

I take a moment to eye the rice, liquid thickening up beautifully and gently simmering. Esther lowers the music, and tells me she likes to hear her food. We eyeball the oil into the pan, about half an inch over mid-high flame and let it heat up.

I ask if she’s always lived in New York. “No, I lived in the DR. I moved to New York when I was 11-years-old.”

“Mom, tell her what day you came here.” Alexa encourages.

“I came to New York in 1974 on a really grey, snowy Thanksgiving Day. I was like, ‘Oh my God! What is going on here? It’s so grey, there are no leaves.’” 

We laugh about leaving a paradise of palm trees to come to a cold, grey New York. The youngest in her family out of 10, Esther moved to Haverstraw with her parents. Her sister, 20 years older, lived in Manhattan at the time. Esther started school 4 days later.

The oil is hot in the pan, and we add about a tablespoon of sugar. It caramelizes quickly and dissolves into the oil, but doesn’t burn. I’m shocked we haven’t added the chicken yet and can’t get over how hot the oil must be. When we’re ready to add the thighs to the pan, Esther holds the lid like a little shield to protect her as she drops them in. 

We let the thighs brown until they release from the bottom of the pan, about 5-7 minutes on each side. Before I know what hit me, the air is filled with the most incredible smell of vinegar and garlic. I audibly gasp with excitement. The kitchen is loudly sizzling, and I am fucking hyped.

Esther puts me in charge of browning the chicken, and we get a good line up of Marc Anthony songs to keep me going. The kitchen is beautifully silent, except for the sound of sizzling and merengue típico. 

I ask if we’ll be baking the chicken. I clearly have no idea what’s about to happen or what this dish even is. But wow, the vinegar smell is so fragrant and exciting. To keep busy, I cut the plantains. In the background you can hear everyone giving their opinions on the right size for the platanos. Luckily, I am a seasoned tostone maker and am ready to cut these guys up.

Once the chicken is adequately browned, we add the veggies on top and stir them around a bit. Apparently, this dish is a lot like cacciatore but the lack of tomatoes changes its life. We spend a moment talking about other things you can add: olives, capers, herbs, whatever you can think of, really. We add a bit more sofrito, and save the rest for the end of the recipe. I ask if we’ll salt it. Esther tells me no, not yet.

We give the peppers and onions about 3 minutes to settle in, and then we pop the wine. We add about ⅓ of the bottle on top of the chicken thighs. Esther swirls a bit of water around the bowl the chickens had been marinated in, making sure to pour every last flavor into the pan. 

The lid goes on the pan to let the chicken boil in the wine. When it starts to boil, we’ll lower it. We add cilantro with all the stems and will take them out later if we need to. I taste for salt. I admit I have no idea what I'm truly tasting for, and sometimes tasting for salt makes me nervous. I say let’s add a little bit, but look to Esther for approval. She says it’s too sweet. We add salt and a few shakes of red pepper flakes.

We lower the chicken that’s boiling and let it reduce, covered for about 15-20 minutes.

We’re ready to do the platanos. We take out an old pot from underneath the sink. It’s missing a handle and we’re not afraid of that. The pot is also 30 years old. Old items get new life in this kitchen. We fill the pot-turned-bowl-turned-platano-fryer with an inch of grapeseed oil so that we can fry our platanos. 

As the oil heats up, I bring us back to Esther’s first days in New York. I ask about school. The classes were entirely in English, and a month later she spoke fluently. Her pride shows, as she speaks to picking up the language, it being her only choice. I ask about her feelings towards ESL classes, and with a stern face she looks at me and says, “Do you know what I say? You’re in America now.” She smiles. Her strength to come here and make it, no matter what, gives her the right to feel people need to speak English in addition to their native tongues. I like this patriotism, I’ve encountered it before from those who really earned their ability to call themselves American. Esther takes a moment to recognize the best part about the US is the diversity and courage that everyone brings to the table. We’re on the same page. There’s a moment of silence, almost in reflection. I really enjoy this moment. I acknowledge how important it is.

The platano are being fried and the chicken is still floating around in its simmering pan. We’re mashing the fried maduros into tostones. We use a tostonera, but you can use a paper bag and a wooden spoon if you don’t have one. They ultimately fry for a second time, but won’t become crispy like the tostones with green plantains. They’ll be softer, and sweeter, and ultimately just different. Jesu, Esther’s boyfriend, says he likes it better this way.

We’re getting down to our last moments of cooking, and the conversation has faded a little. Our minds are on the food now. The chicken is ready and when I taste the sauce, I come alive. It is truly incredible. 

We uncover the rice, which honestly has cooked for about 50 minutes between boiling and steaming, and is now a beautiful consistency that I really enjoy. If you like your rice on the dryer side, you could probably cut this recipe by ½ a cup of water. 

Rice is served into tiny bowls for tasting. At this point, you may feel like adding salt to your rice. I’d have said go for it because I felt the same way, but I got pushback on salting the rice immediately and decided to hold off and trust Esther and Alexa. 

I’m running short on time, so we decide to plate. I can’t help myself and I take a huge bite of the moro (rice) slathered in the sauce from the pollo guisado (chicken). Suddenly, it all makes sense. The rice cuts through the acidic sauce extremely well and I suddenly understand why I didn’t need to salt. 

There is still a hint of wine in the sauce with a garlicky sweetness of the onions and peppers, and the moro blends perfectly into the background. A vehicle for flavor. The chicken is shredding off the bone without any hesitation. I’m in heaven. 

Before I leave, we run through a list of Dominican foods I have to learn to cook. At the top of the list is sancocho. I’ve never had it, I tell them, and I get a whaaat!? 

As I get ready to leave, I can feel the energy has changed. I may have entered the house an acquaintance, but I left feeling so warm and welcomed in a way I didn’t expect. I head out into the night, my bag filled with Pollo Guisado, Moro, y Tostones. The merengue tipico plays on in the background, the percussion guiding me home. 

To learn how to make Pollo Guisado con Moro, follow the recipe here.