Ropa Vieja

beef simmered until it shreds into rags and stewed down in a sofrito of pepper, onion and tomato with olives and capers

Origin: Havana & the Caribbean

From the journey of Bell Pepper.

Ropa vieja means old clothes, and the name describes the finished dish exactly: beef simmered until it falls into long shredded strands that look like a heap of rags. It is the national dish of Cuba, it is eaten across Panama and Venezuela, and its ancestor is Sephardic and Canarian rather than Caribbean at all. The Canary Islands version, made with chickpeas and whatever meat was left from a stew, is the direct parent, and Canarian migration to Cuba and to the isthmus through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is how it arrived. A Sephardic origin is also widely proposed, on the reasoning that a Sabbath dish had to be cooked the day before and reheated, which is exactly what ropa vieja is; the connection is plausible and repeated in a good many sources without being demonstrated. What is not disputed is that the dish reached the Americas from the Canaries and that Cuba made it its own. The sofrito is where the Caribbean version parts from the Spanish one. Cuban and Panamanian cooks build it on green pepper in quantity, with onion, garlic, tomato, cumin, and oregano, and finish the pan with olives and capers and a splash of the dry wine or sherry that is standard in Cuban cooking. The pepper is not a background aromatic here: it goes in by the two or three, sliced rather than diced, and it is what the sauce tastes of. Flank steak is the correct cut and the reason is structural. It has long parallel muscle fibres that separate into strands when they are simmered and then pulled, which is what produces the rags; a cut with a tighter grain gives chunks and the dish loses its own name.

Ingredients

Beef

  • 1.2 kg flank or skirt steak, in one piece

Broth

  • 2 litres water
  • 1 onion, halved
  • 1 carrot, halved
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 1 tsp black peppercorns

Sofrito

  • 3 green peppers, sliced into strips
  • 1 red pepper, sliced into strips
  • 2 onions, thinly sliced
  • 10 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 5 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp tomato purée
  • 400 g tinned chopped tomatoes
  • 1 tbsp ground cumin
  • 2 tsp dried oregano
  • 1 tsp sweet paprika
  • 150 ml dry white wine or dry sherry

To finish

  • 100 g green olives, stoned and halved
  • 3 tbsp capers, drained
  • 1 handful coriander or parsley, chopped

Seasoning

  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste

Method

  1. Simmer the beef in the water with the halved onion, carrot, bay, and peppercorns for two hours, until it pulls apart with no resistance.
  2. Keep it at a bare simmer. Boiled hard, flank goes stringy and dry rather than tender, and the broth turns cloudy.
  3. Lift the beef out and let it cool enough to handle, and strain the broth, keeping 500ml.
  4. Pull the beef apart along the grain into long thin strands with two forks or your fingers.
  5. Pull along the grain, never across it. The long strands are the whole reason the dish is called old clothes.
  6. Soften the sliced peppers and onions in the olive oil in a wide pan over a medium heat for fifteen minutes, until they are limp and beginning to catch colour.
  7. Add the garlic, cumin, oregano, and paprika and cook for two minutes, then stir in the tomato purée and fry it for a further two.
  8. Pour in the wine, let it bubble away for two minutes, then add the tinned tomatoes and the reserved broth.
  9. Simmer for fifteen minutes until the sauce has thickened and darkened.
  10. Fold in the shredded beef and cook gently for twenty-five minutes, so the strands take up the sauce.
  11. Add the olives and capers in the last five minutes and taste for salt; the olives and capers bring a good deal of their own.
  12. Scatter the herbs over and serve with white rice, black beans, and fried ripe plantain.

Notes

Flank or skirt steak only; the long grain is what makes the strands. Simmer gently and pull along the grain. Keep the broth and use it in the sauce rather than water. Green pepper in quantity, sliced into strips rather than diced, and cooked until limp. Olives and capers go in at the end. It is better the following day, which is consistent with the Sabbath-dish account of its origins, and it freezes well.

The Gastrographer

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