Picadillo

This recipe was given to me by a friend named Yennisha. She is a Cuban mamma and a superb cook! She made this dish for dinner while I was visiting her and my big brother in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Ingredients

Olive Oil
2 cloves garlic
Quarter of a Green Bell Pepper
Quarter of a medium onion
Dash of Cumin
Season all salt
Small can tomato sauce
1 bay leaf
Splash of red cooking wine
1 lb ground turkey or ground beef


Directions

-Put garlic cloves, bell peppers, and onions in a food processor and blend until everything is finely chopped. (just do by hand if you don’t have a food processor).
-In a pan head up approx 2 tablespoons of olive oil on med heat.
When the olive oil is hot add the garlic cloves, bell peppers, and onions (The mixture of these 3 ingredients is called Sofrito and it is basis for almost all Cuban/Spanish dishes….you will need to make the same thing for the other dish)
-Heat the Sofrito until it starts browning slightly…you might need to add a little bit more olive oil if you notice that its drying out and burning.
Add the cumin and season all to the Sofrito as it is cooking in the olive oil.
Once the Sofrito has cooked add the meat and cook until done
Once you have browned the meat add the bay leaf (not super necessary) and the can of tomato sauce…I usually add some red cooking wine to the can and stir it around so I can get all the tomato sauce out of it…plus the wine adds some good flavor. Not too much though
* I’m sure you can get pretty much any Hispanic seasoning … I also usually add a pack of Goya seasonings to step 7. They come in a little box and each box brings about 10 little packages in it. Not super essential but if you can get it, I’d recommend it.