Week 16 - Cuban

We had a lot of Cuban food during our WorldEats exploring, but when the theme for Week 16 came up as Cuban, nothing immediately sprang to mind for the challenge. I looked around online for a bit until I found this recipe for a baked version of potato balls (aka papas rellenas) filled with meat, and then it came to me. I could do potato balls but fill them with picadillo, another Cuban dish I'd had before and always found comforting. Even better, I could make it turkey picadillo, using this Skinnytaste recipe for turkey picadillo as inspiration! Of course, once I found the turkey picadillo recipe, I could have just made turkey picadillo over rice and called it a day, but that didn't occur to me until weeks after the initial idea, after I had already gone to the grocery store to pick up stuff for the challenge. I guess I was just that fixated on the idea of papas rellenas!

For the Cuban challenge project, I combined and adapted the 2 recipes and used:

- 2 russet potatoes ($0.98)

- 1 tbsp butter ($0.25)

- 1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs ($0.15)

- 1 lb of ground turkey ($4)

- salt and pepper to taste ($0.05)

- 1 yellow onion, finely chopped ($0.60)

- 1 bell pepper, finely chopped ($0.84)

- 5 cloves of garlic, minced ($0.05)

- 14 oz can of diced tomatoes ($0.75)

- 2 cubes of cilantro ($0.20)

- 5 spoonfuls of manzanilla olives with pimentos, chopped ($1.10)

- 5 spoonfuls of olive brine ($0.10)

- 1/2 cup water ($0)

- 2-3 tbsp tomato paste ($0.80)

- 1 tsp cumin ($0.05)

- 2 bay leaves ($0.20)

- garlic powder and onion powder to taste ($0.10)

Sounds like a lot of ingredients, but it really wasn't that complicated of a recipe (although parts were time-consuming). The total for the whole recipe was approximately $10.22, with the majority of that being the ground turkey. That was a reasonable price for dinner, since it also left us with a bowl of leftovers that I ate for lunch.

To make the picadillo-stuffed potato balls, there were 2 simultaneous processes going. I had to make mashed potatoes and picadillo and hope that the timing worked out. The potato part is fairly straightforward as it's just mashed potatoes - boil potatoes until fork tender, mash them, add butter, stir until smooth. Or however else you make mashed potatoes. Then you just have to give them a little bit of time to cool.

For the picadillo, I used our Dutch oven and did the following:

1. Heat olive oil and add the ground turkey, seasoning with salt and pepper. Break up turkey as it browns.

2. Add onion, bell pepper, garlic, tomatoes, and cilantro. Saute for a few minutes. [I would have used regular chopped cilantro but I couldn't bear to buy a whole bunch just to use so little and have the rest go to waste.]

3. Add olives and olive brine, and cook for a few minutes.

4. Add cumin, bay leaves, tomato paste, water, salt, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder to taste.

At this point you're supposed to let it simmer for at least 15 minutes. I think I simmered it for at least 30 minutes, probably more, tasting it all along the way. The longer you can simmer it, in my opinion, the better. I had started out with only a couple of spoonfuls of olives and olive brine, but didn't think the picadillo had enough of that type of flavor in it so I added a few more spoonfuls of each. I surprised myself doing that as I'm not a huge fan of olives and have always thought those olives were pretty strong, but they were the perfect ingredient to balance out all the other flavors and I actually really liked them in the picadillo. Somehow the bites with olives were better than the ones without. Who would have guessed I would ever say that?

Once the mashed potatoes were ready and a little bit cooled (which took way longer than I was expecting, since the potatoes took forever to boil, but it let the picadillo simmer even longer, so overall, not the worst thing), it was time to make the potato balls. Supposedly they are supposed to end up golf ball sized, but I think mine ended up bigger. Oh well. They were fine, even if not really able to be eaten by hand.

I took a handful of mashed potato, hollowed it out to form a cup, added a spoonful or so of picadillo, and then closed up the hole and reformed it into a ball. Then I rolled the balls in the bread crumbs. Sounds pretty simple, but I think we've already established that somehow I always suck at breading and dredging things. This wasn't really any different, although I guess it worked out okay, even if the potato balls ended up all different sizes, not really crispy, and very oddly shaped.

The potato balls baked for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. The bread crumbs were a little browner, but they weren't hugely different from the potato balls prior to going into the oven. They didn't crisp up as much as I expected but maybe they were too big. At least it was a fun experiment to do.

We really, really liked the picadillo here, and it's something I would definitely make again. It just had really great flavor and I was so happy that I found something that I could use olives in that didn't feel overpowering. As for the potato ball part, the potatoes did taste good with the picadillo, but they were really just a vehicle for eating the picadillo. Another great challenge week!