Carimañola

Ingredients

• Cassava1.2 kg
• Minced beef400 g
• Onion1
• Bell pepper1
• Garlic3 clove
• Tomato paste1 tbsp
• Ground cumin1 tsp
• Egg1
• Culantro or coriander30 g
• Oil for frying1 l
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Peel the cassava, strip the woody core and boil it in salted water until completely soft.

   30 min

2. 2

   Mash the cassava hot and work it with the egg and salt into a pliable dough.

   12 min

3. 3

   Fry the onion, pepper and garlic, add the mince, cumin and tomato paste and cook it through.

   15 min

4. 4

   Stir the culantro into the filling and cool it completely.

   20 min

5. 5

   Take a lump of dough with wet hands, flatten it on your palm and put the filling in the centre.

   15 min

6. 6

   Seal it and draw it into a torpedo with pointed ends.

   12 min

7. 7

   Fry at 175 °C for four minutes, to a deep golden crust, and serve them hot.

   20 min

About the dish

The cassava is mashed hot and worked until pliable. Cooled it crumbles and cannot be shaped — the moment must not be missed.

The shape is a torpedo with pointed ends. That is the mark of a carimañola: a round cassava ball goes by another name in Panama.

The filling is cooled completely. Warm, it softens the cassava from within and the croquette opens along its seam in the oil.

Worth knowing

• — Mash the cassava immediately after boiling. Cooled, it loses its stickiness and the dough crumbles in the hand.
• — Seal the seams carefully. Through any gap the filling escapes into the oil and burns at the bottom of the fryer.
• — Carimañolas are eaten at breakfast with coffee. In Panama they are sold at the roadside from six in the morning alongside hojaldres.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

480 kcal

Protein

20 g

Fat

22 g

Carbs

52 g

More from Panama

• Panamanian sancocho — Chicken soup with ñame root and culantro. Panama's cure for a hangover and for a cold.
• Panamanian ropa vieja — Shredded beef in tomato sauce with olives and capers, in the Panamanian style — drier than the Cuban.
• Coconut rice — Rice cooked in coconut milk with caramelised coconut solids, dark and faintly sweet.