Cabrito a la Norteña & Me

 Cabrito a la Norteña & Me

So you must be wondering, what does Cabrito a la Norteña mean?!! It translates to Northern goat Stew… I know...I know a lot of people are icky about eating goat, but it’s actually a very delicious meat and even more made into a Peruvian stew.

 This dish reminds me of my father. My dear father comes from the northern part of Peru, Cajamarca. A beautiful city, wonderful, rich in history and in their delicious dishes. This is my fathers favor dish, every birthday this is what he ask to eat on that day. So you can say the entire family gets a full and happy belly. I added this recipe to my book, Family Secrets, in which you can find many of these dishes with a secret preparation for each and one of my family stories.

 This is one of those dishes that just makes you wants to eat up to the last bone and lick the plate!!  

And now for the recipe:

Cabrito a la Norteña:

·         10 pieces of goat/part of the leg

·         2 medium red onions chopped (diced)

·         8 cloves of garlic (diced)

·         1 bunch of scallions chopped

·         1 bunch of cilantro chopped

·         3 Cubitos de Carne ( seasoning powder cubes of beef

·         ¼ os teaspoon of black pepper

·         ¼ cup of white vinager

·         1 cup of Chicha de Jora

(since we don’t find this easily in the US we use a secret ingedient )

·         1 tablespoon Ají Panca (this you can find in the Peruvian products in a paste like form)

·         ¼ cup of canola oil

·         1 teaspoon of Salt

·         ¼ teaspoon Ajino moto (asian seasoning)

Secret Preparation:

The best smell in the world to me is the smell of the garlic frying in the pot, and that is the most important thing you should do when making any kind of stew let the garlic become a brownish color this way you can get all that nice flavor out. BUT before this you have to place the diced onions in first. Why you say?? Well because the onion takes longer to kind of cook and you also want the onion to not fry but cook enough that it will become a brownish color. Those are the TWO most important things to do right.

After this add the:

·          1 tablespoon Ají Panca (this you can find in the Peruvian products in a paste like form)

·         1/4 cup  of white vinegar

·         1 cup of Chicha de Jora (instead use a beer (Corona is better is not as strong as Heineken but not as soft as Budlight))

·         3 Cubitos de Carne ( seasoning powder cubes of beef)

·         ¼ of teaspoon of black pepper

·         ¼ teaspoon Ajino moto (asian seasoning)

·         ¼ cup of white vinager

·         10 pieces of goat/ part of the leg

Let all of this marinate and cook for about an hour for the goat to be nice and soft don’t forget to add on maybe a ½ to ¾ of a cup of water every now and then, just to make sure the liquid doesn’t dry up and then your goat will burn.

Once the goat is cooked, add on the:

·         1 bunch of scallions chopped

·         1 bunch of cilantro chopped

 I love to serve it with either white rice (or brown if you prefer) and  cassava (yucca)

Ohhh and if you want to, you can make a SALSA criolla:

Which consist of:

·         1 large red or white onion sliced

·         2 lemos ( only need the juice)

·         ¼ of habanero chili sliced or diced

·         Salt

·         Pepper

·         ½ tablespoon of vinegar

·         Cilantro (about a tablespoon)

Mix all this together and you have yourself a nice accompaniment, let this salsa sit for about 10 minutes before serving.

And there you go, now you have prepared Cabrito a la Norteña con Salsa a la Criolla. Which by the way is a mixture of two different worlds. Criolla means Creole and Norteña is the northern side.