These Beans are a Time Machine

Twenty-five years ago, I was a callow youth in my mid-twenties. I’d flunked out of college once, worked my ass off to get back in, then got bored and left on my second try. I’d done temp work, gotten fired at nearly every major fast-food chain (never did get fired from a Burger King but I was never much likely to set foot in one), done tech support, interned at manufacturing companies, and worked in a print shop. I was the rhythm guitarist in a former metal band that was transitioning to alternative Latin music. I knew everything, and if I didn’t know something, it must not be worth knowing.

I was, in short, an asshole. I was loud and impatient and self-assured. I sailed through my days at work like they were nothing, and drank and shot pool every night like that was my job. Worst of all, as I’m sure most people who have known me for a while could attest, I never listened. Why would I, when I already knew everything worth knowing?

At the particular time I’m thinking of, I was working for a moving company in the south loop. I did help out on a few smaller moving jobs but mostly what I did was drive a delivery van, picking up moving supplies at the retail location in the Clybourn corridor and delivering them all over the city and suburbs.

I remember a lot of things about that job–I liked the office location, on South Wabash not far from Chinatown, and the freedom I had to get my work done on my own time, and the fact that I could drive a delivery van or a box truck home just about any night I wanted to. I remember that a couple of the guys there first took me to Maxwell Street for a Polish sausage, back when it was still on Maxwell Street. I still appreciate them for that. I don’t really remember anything specific about too many of the people that worked there though.

I do remember Cesar. Cesar was my dispatcher–he’d page me each morning to let me know how many jobs I’d have for the day and where, so I could get a jump on planning. He was the guy who, when the owner had a meltdown and fired somebody, a nearly daily occurrence, would tell the firee to take the rest of the day off but be back tomorrow and then talk the boss down. Cesar got along with everyone, and when I interviewed for the job, Cesar saw something in me and hired me, though I probably didn’t rate a second look at the time.

Cesar tried to take me under his wing, mentor me. He seemed to take everything in stride, whether he was at the depot or at a bar, whereas I just wanted to get work things done so I could go somewhere else and do something else. He tried to teach me patience, that I didn’t need to tear ass from one job to another, weaving through traffic in a big blocky van, that he’d scheduled the jobs in such a way that I had plenty of time to get from one to the other. I didn’t listen.

One time, Cesar invited me to his home for dinner. His wife, a native of Peru like himself, would be preparing a traditional Peruvian meal, and he thought I’d enjoy the experience. He, in fact, would not take no for an answer. So after work that evening, we hauled ass up Western Avenue–I remember Cesar telling me, only slightly exasperatedly, that it didn’t make sense to immediately accelerate to the fastest available speed and wait until the last possible second to brake and that in fact it was bad for the vehicle to do so–to his home on the far north side. Was it West Ridge? Rogers Park? I don’t recall. But it was a bit of a drive during rush hour, and top speed during rush hour wasn’t all that fast anyway, and the Western Avenue flyover at Belmont wasn’t nearly as terrifying as he made it out to be.

Regardless, we made it there and sat down at the table with beers, and chatted, and ate. Dinner was a Peruvian dish, a pancake of rice and beans fried in a pan until crisp, that I only recently Googled and learned was called Tacu-tacu. It was served with a thin grilled steak, and there was a dish in the middle of the table with some kind of salsa. The salsa appeared to be finely chopped chilies and not much else. Cesar warned me that it could be potent. I told him I could take it and piled it on. It was a mistake.

Still, overall it was a good evening, and I appreciated Cesar and family’s hospitality. When, inevitably, the owner of the moving company screamed at me and fired me a few weeks or a month later, Cesar told me to go home and relax, and he’d call me with my delivery schedule the next morning. I didn’t listen. In fact, I never went back. I moved back downstate to my hometown of Quincy, and I worked more deadend jobs, ending up as a bartender at a neighborhood dive making $25 per shift, plus tips. (Nobody ever tipped. Ever.) Eventually I met Mindy, turned myself around, got married, had kids, turned myself into the upstanding citizen (read: fat dad) I am today.

I never forgot that meal though. I’ve been thinking about it for 25 years. This month, working on the Peruvian Butifarra sandwich, I knew it was time to make it myself.

The recipes I’ve found for tacu-tacu sometimes call for pinto beans, sometimes for lentils, but the more interesting, authentic-looking recipes I found called for canary beans. Turns out these are sometimes called Peruvian beans but are most likely available in the Mexican section at your local grocery store (at least, if you have a decent Mexican section) as Mayo Coba beans. It starts with a simple sofrito, maybe just onion and garlic, maybe some tomato and chili as well. Or maybe it starts with beans that have already been seasoned and cooked and served and are now just taking up space in the kitchen. Regardless, some of the beans get mashed with a potato masher, or the back of a spoon, or even pureed in a blender, to act as a binding ingredient, then are mixed back in with the rest of the beans and some leftover rice, mixed and squeezed and mashed together until they’ve come together like a bread dough.

Then they can be separated into individual fist-sized balls and smashed onto an oiled griddle and fried. Or, if you’re feeling ambitious, you can make one giant pancake in a 14″ cast iron griddle.

Flipping this was not easy. I inverted a hot 12″ cast iron skillet over it and just used that to fry the other side. Pancake-like it may be, but the rice and beans don’t hold together the way an actual bread product does. A word to the wise though–if there is still some loose oil in the pan when you flip it over, turn it away from yourself, not towards.

When done properly, the tacu-tacu should have a nicely browned, crisp crust on both sides. I understand there are some versions of tacu-tacu that are more like Chinese-style fried rice, served loosely in a pile. I like that crunchy rice though. I’m gonna do mine this way.

I also made a second batch of salsa criolla, and made it a few hours ahead of time to let the flavors blend and the lime juice start to leech the color from the red onions, turning them pink. I will find a dozen other uses for salsa criolla in the near future, I’m sure, but it’ll never last more than a day or so in my kitchen. If you take nothing else away from these Peru posts of mine, know this: you need to try this.

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Salsa Criolla

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Most of the google searches I did told me that the steak that normally gets served with tacu-tacu is churrasco, which in Peru means grilled skirt steak. My memory tells me that what I ate that night was something different, some lean cheap steak simply seasoned, pounded flat, and cooked a la plancha, or on a griddle. But I will take the internet’s advice over my sometimes foggy memories of those times.

Finally, there was the spicy mix of chopped-up peppers, or salsa, or whatever it was in a bowl with a little spoon at the center of Cesar’s dinner table. None of the research I’ve done has suggested what this might be. All roads lead back to salsa criolla when searching for Peruvian salsas. It might have been salsa rocoto. I can’t say. What I did was pull a couple of chilis from my garden, and a tomato, and dice them up really fine along with a little onion, and a couple spoons of both aji amarillo paste and aji rocoto paste, lime juice, and salt. It was spicy, savory, sour, everything I wanted it to be. Probably less spicy than what I had at Cesar’s all those years ago. I’d love to have that again some day. In the meantime, this would have to do.

I cut the tacu-tacu into wedges, and let everyone have at it. For my own part, I served the salsa criolla on the side, with some of the spicy salsa atop the beans and rice.

I wasn’t serving steak with a side of rice and beans, though. I was serving tacu-tacu, a crispy and compellingly delicious rice and bean pancake, with a side of steak.

Was this meal worth a 25 year wait? Did I find myself transported back in time into that north side Chicago kitchen, to give myself another chance to listen to the advice of my would-be mentor? Had age mellowed me, made me a more patient man, a better listener?

I spent that time preparing the meal on a late Sunday morning / early Sunday afternoon cursing the rain that was delaying me from lighting the grill, and then cursing the charcoal for not lighting quickly enough. I cursed the dog when he got up on the table, stole and ate about 30% of the skirt steak I’d planned to grill. I grumbled under my breath as I rushed around and got everything ready and arranged a plate and took my photos. In short, I may be just as big an asshole as I ever was.

I’m trying, though, Cesar. I’m working on developing patience, though it’s slow going. I’d like to be a good listener, and I succeed sometimes, though just last night I found myself talking over someone I’d just met, and felt ashamed, and sat in silence the rest of the conversation. As for being transported in time, making the tacu-tacu sure has had me thinking an awful lot about that night, but I don’t know that I remember it any better than I had before. What was your wife’s name? Were there kids there? Do you have a last name or is Cesar some kind of mononym? I just don’t know. But I thank you for this meal. I won’t wait another 25 years before I have it again.