PUERTO RICO

The Caribbean island's cuisine combines African, Indigenous and Spanish influences to create dishes of distinction

- ZOE BELL

Steam rises off the mound of fried green plantains in front of me. Pablo Pont Ruiz, my guide here in Old San Juan, instructs me to grab my pilón y maceta (mortar and pestle) and start mashing. I have Puerto Rico's unofficial national dish, mofongo, lying deconstructed on my plate — and with the plantains piping hot and marinated, cooked chicken and traditional ajillo garlic sauce at the ready, it's time to start assembling.

I'm at El Patio de Sam, a restaurant just steps away from the towering Catedral de San Juan Bautista, the second-oldest church in the Western Hemisphere. Pablo and I get to work, surrounded by families and holidaying Americans seated at yellow and blue tiled tables in the venue's titular open-air patio.

“Mofongo is a blend of Puerto Rico’s historic identities,” Pablo explains. The first of these influences can be seen in the tools we're using to create the dish. The tall wooden mortar, known as a pilón, and its wooden pestle, the maceta, he says, date back to the Taínos, the Indigenous people who inhabited the island for hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived in 1493. The Taínos used these tools for mashing medicinal herbs and they remain everyday kitchen essentials.