Pete's way to make Yuca, Columbian style!!
Posted: Sunday, December 14, 2008
by Peter Alfieri
Buon Appetito Providence
This is a great recipe, it took me many years to perfect this. I first had this dish at a local restaurant and the owner wouldn't disclose the recipe. Needless to say it took many trips to the aforementioned restaurant before I finally got an original recipe that rivals the said establishment.
Difficulty (Scale from 1-10): 5
This is a 3 step process to preparing this delicious dish.
Step 1: Cooking the yuca.
Step 2: Cooking the sauce.
Step 3: Combining the yuca & the sauce.
Ingredients
Step 1
2 pounds of yuca - cut into 3-4 inch sections, skinned, and then cut in half. (NOTE: When purchasing yuca it should be hard and without any visible areas of rot)
2 tablespoons of salt (To salt the water)
Step 2
4 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
4 cloves of garlic - pressed
One large Vidalia onion - Chopped
1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper
2 teaspoons of salt
14.5 ounces of tomato sauce
Preparation:
Step 1
Prepare yuca by cutting it into 3-4 inch long peices, then with the cut end down use a knife to trim the skin off of the yuca, working your way all around. (Note: the cut yuca should be white and not showing any brown areas. Also, it should have little to no smell.) Once yuca is skinned cut the round section in half.
Next, place all of the yuca into a 3 quart pot. Cover the yuca with enough water such that the water level is 1 inch higher than the yuca, salt the water (2 tablespoons salt), bring to a boil then cover and let simmer for 30 minutes or until yuca is soft (a knife should be able to pierce yuca with some resistance).
Step 2
While the yuca cooks (step 1) prepare the sauce.
Add olive oil, crushed garlic, chopped onion, and crushed red pepper to a medium sized sauce pan, cook on medium-high until onions are translucent. Add salt and cook for one more minute, then add tomato sauce. Let the sauce simmer (lower temp) for 20 minutes then remove from heat.
Step 3
Remove 2 cups (16 ounces) of water from the 3 quart pot containing the yuca (from Step 1). Add the sauce mixture (from Step 2) to the pot (from Step 1) and simmer for an additional 30 minutes. Then serve!!
Enjoy your delicious meal!!!
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Top-level comments on this article: (6 total)hi peter,this sounds delicious. i'm not the cook in the family, my partner is, but i would love to be eating a nice plate of this right now. maybe i can surprise him and make it for him one day. i never heard of a yuca, though. i'll have to see where i could get some. i'll put this article into my favorites.thanks for sharing this with us,best regards,sue thom
Peter,Although this is a very helpful article, I am still wondering what the hek is Yuca????
Ronyae, yuca is a root vegitable. It's quite tasty, most supermarkets carry it; if they don't, you can find it in markets that specialize in latin american food. :)
What is yuca? What family of food or plant?
I liked how it was layed out as far as the steps so that you now before hand if it is something that you would like to attempt. Very good.
Hey, thank you for the great idea! My girlfriend will LOVE it.
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