Let’s see… I started Cooking the World From A to Z in January. It’s now September. I’m on the letter N. So much for my plan of doing 26 countries in 26 weeks. Or, more accurately, 25 – there is no country starting with “X” to my knowledge…
My cooking habits really are different once the air conditioning comes on… We have a small house. Any prolonged cooking or oven use heats the place up really quick.
But temps are falling a bit this week – time to get back on track…
I chose Nicaragua for a couple of reasons… first, because I have worked with quite a few people from Nicaragua over the years and really love the culture and the food. Second, because our friend, Paige, was a travel writer for Lonely Planet as well as her own publishing company. I created a couple of websites for her over the years and still have all those files – including this story entitled The Pirates of Lake Nicaragua.
Pirates of Lake Nicaragua
Paige R Penland
This was originally published in Lonely Planet Nicaragua & El Salvador 1
It was one of the most daring exploits in pirate history, a career coup even for dashing, up-and-coming buccaneer Henry Morgan and his band of rum-soaked merry men: The sacking of Central America’s crown jewel, Granada, Nicaragua, lovely and languid and all but defenseless on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, a vast freshwater expanse that the locals called Cocibolca, the “Sweet Sea.”
It couldn’t have been done in a full-size sailing vessel – if you’re ever lucky enough to follow Morgan’s path up the Río San Juan, connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the largest lake in Central America, you’ll see how the rapids would tear regular ship apart. But this crafty band of quick-thinking buccaneers had already appropriated six 12-meter wooden canoes (after their regular pirate ships were impounded by Spanish authorities) following an equally spectacular sacking of Villahermosa, Mexico. The atypical craft proved more than adequate for further pillaging along Caribbean Coast, which gave the 30-year-old Morgan an idea.
His crew battled the current of the Río San Juan at night and hid their canoes during the day, then made their way across the great lake. The June 1665 attack caught complacent Granadinos completely off guard: The pirates occupied the city for 16 hours – just like the Disney ride, but much more violent – then stole all the gold and ammunition, sank all the boats, and sailed off to a warm welcome, as heroes and legends, to Port Royal, Jamaica.
Buccaneers had been a part of Caribbean culture since the late 1500s, bands of escaped slaves, indentured servants and deported criminals who lived off livestock escaped from the Spanish colonies, and (so the legend goes) stretched the skins on ‘buccans,’ hence the name. When other European powers, envious of Spain’s newfound riches, decided to set up shop in the sunny Caribbean, they contacted the buccaneers and began making deals.
In 1655 the English made their move and, with pirate support and intelligence, took the island of Jamaica and transformed it into a British colony – a colony of ex-convicts and street toughs. Among them was Henry Morgan, who quickly climbed the ranks from co-pirate, sacking such hotspots as Santiago, Cuba, to a pirate commander with the successful Granada expedition under his belt. By the time Sir Henry Morgan drank himself to death in 1688, he had been made Pirate King (technically, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica) and Knight of the British Empire.
He had also influenced a generation. Between 1665 and 1670, Granada was sacked three times, even as Morgan took more pirate canoes up the Río Coco, along what’s now the Honduran-Nicaraguan border, where they made powerful allies of the Miskito Indians. With their help, the pirates sacked the Spanish settlements Ciudad Antiguä and Estelí, where Morgan himself stayed for a while, and founded several of the surrounding towns.
Pirates actually founded more cities in Nicaragua than they ever sacked, including Pueblo Viejo and several surrounding towns in the Segovias; Bilwi (also known as Puerto Cabezas), on the Caribbean Coast; and most famously, Bluefields, named for founder Abraham Blauvelt, a Dutch pirate who worked the waters from Rhode Island to Panama. Heck, pirate William Dampier, a trained scientist and veteran of the 1665 sacking of Granada, filed the report on the earliest historic eruption of San Cristóbal Volcano in 1685, used to help plan the construction of the current hydroelectric plant.
Although the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick guaranteed that England, Spain, France and Holland would respect each others’ property in the New World, the pirates (for whom legality was not a huge concern) continued to try for Granada; in 1769, 17-year-old Rafaela Herrera commanded Spanish forces at El Castillo, the most important Spanish fortress on the Río San Juan, defending against pirates trying to take Granada yet again. She won the battle for Nicaragua’s most beautiful town, and thus the age of pirates on Lake Nicaragua slipped into history.
What’s fun about the story is it’s not the sort of stuff one learns in school AND a 17 year old girl kicked ass on the pirates!
So now that we know all about the namesake of Captain Morgan Rum, let’s move on to dinner…
This one ticked off all the boxes for me – easy to put together, lots of different flavors and textures – AND I happened to have all the ingredients!
There are a LOT of recipes for Arroz A La Valenciana out there on the internet, so, as is my wont, I took a few liberties, but stayed closest to a recipe from Nata Knows Best.
As the name implies, the concept for the recipe originated in Valencia, Spain – an offshoot of a paella made with local ingredients.
Arroz A La Valenciana
adapted from several online sources
- 1 cup white rice, cooked the day before
- 1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast
- 12 oz andouille or chorizo-type sausage
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1/2 cup onion, chopped
- 1/3 cup carrots, chopped
- 1/3 cup celery, chopped
- 1/3 cup green peppers, hopped
- 1 medium tomato, diced
- 1 tbsp garlic, minced
- 1/2 cup chicken stock (reserved from boiled chicken)
- 1 to 2 tbsp adobo all purpose seasoning
- 1/2 packet sazon with achiote
- 1 tbsp ketchup
- 1 teaspoon of worcestershire sauce
Cook 1 cup of white rice with chicken stock until done. Refrigerate rice for next day.
When ready to make, add chicken breast, chopped garlic, and adobo to a saucepan and simmer until fully cooked.
Once cooked, remove chicken from broth, cool, and shred. Reserve the broth for later.
In a sauté pan, add olive oil and butter. Add sausage, chopped onion, celery, carrots, green peppers, and tomatoes. Cook until soft.
Next add shredded chicken along with 1/2 cup – or more, as needed – reserved chicken broth. Simmer for 5 minutes.
Add cooked rice to the chicken and veggies.
Add half a packet of sazon, dashes of ketchup and Worcestershire sauce. Mix well.
I tend to add hot peppers to anything I make from south of the Rio Grande and it took restraint to NOT add any to this dish. Once again, I was pleasantly surprised at the finished product. It had a sweetness I don’t normally associate with Central American foods – not cloying or sugary – just a sweetness from the tomatoes and vegetables – and that little shot of ketchup.
Another interesting note is many recipes called for “hot dogs”. As I was not about to cut up and add Oscar Meyer wieners, I looked about and decided a better ingredient would be a chorizo or andouille. Other recipes called for ham, so I figured there was leeway, there. I had andouille so it’s what I used.
I’m glad I finally made it to N! “O” is next – and there’s only one country that begins with it!