Panamanian ropa vieja

Ingredients

• Beef flank900 g
• Onions2
• Bell peppers2
• Tomatoes500 g
• Tomato paste2 tbsp
• Garlic6 clove
• Green olives80 g
• Capers2 tbsp
• Ground cumin1 tsp
• Oregano1 tsp
• Culantro or coriander30 g
• Vegetable oil60 ml
• Rice — to serve350 g
• 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

   Simmer the beef whole in salted water with bay for an hour and a half. Keep the broth.

   95 min

2. 2

   Cool the meat and pull it into long strands along the grain.

   15 min

3. 3

   Fry the onion, pepper and garlic in oil until soft, eight minutes.

   10 min

4. 4

   Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, cumin and oregano and cook ten minutes to thicken.

   12 min

5. 5

   Fold in the meat, olives and capers and stew twenty minutes, adding broth a spoonful at a time.

   22 min

6. 6

   Drive off any excess liquid uncovered; the sauce should coat the strands.

   8 min

7. 7

   Scatter with culantro and serve with rice and fried plantain.

   5 min

About the dish

The Panamanian version is drier than the Cuban: less sauce, and it should coat the strands rather than pool around them. A wet ropa vieja reads as unfinished here.

The meat is pulled apart by hand along the grain rather than cut. The name means "old clothes" — it should look like a pile of rags.

The capers and olives are not garnish: their saltiness stands in for some of the salt and gives the sauce a sharpness tomato alone does not.

Worth knowing

• — Flank or brisket are the only suitable cuts. Their long fibres are what give the dish its look.
• — Pull it apart warm but not hot. Cold meat is harder to shred and breaks across the grain.
• — Salt at the end and cautiously: the olives and capers are salty already, and oversalting is easy.

Nutrition

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

Calories

580 kcal

Protein

46 g

Fat

24 g

Carbs

46 g

More from Panama

• Panamanian sancocho — Chicken soup with ñame root and culantro. Panama's cure for a hangover and for a cold.
• Carimañola — Torpedo-shaped cassava croquettes with a meat filling, deep-fried.
• Coconut rice — Rice cooked in coconut milk with caramelised coconut solids, dark and faintly sweet.