All About Pasteles

Let me tell you honestly, that I have never made a pastele in my entire life. Nor would I ever want to - simply because it is insanely time consuming. I will never forget, as a little girl, watching all the women in my family sit in the kitchen making pasteles from scratch. Each would have their own job, and they could easily be in that kitchen for hours!

But the reason I'd like to blog about pasteles is because they are delicious and definitely worth buying! :) In my family, we usually eat them on special occasions, with some ketchup on top. But you can try them whenever you'd like.

Here are some of the main ingredients used to make a pastele: pork meat, ham pieces, spanish olives, capers, tomato sauce, roasted peppers and chick peas. Cooking these together will end up giving you the filling.

To create the outside, you'd then need green bananas, yautia (a root vegetable, very starchy), potatoes, and achiote (a sauce made from the juice of annato seeds).

Once everything is prepared, you'd wrap it all up in a plantain leaf - I told you this was complicated! Then it is either boiled to be cooked, or frozen and saved for future use.

As complicated as all of this sounds and as weird as they look, I want to reassure everyone that pasteles are amazingly delicious and definitely worth trying.

Enjoy!!