Catibías

Ingredients

• 400 g cassava flour (harina de catibía)
• 240 ml warm water, more as needed
• 1½ tsp salt
• 1 onion, very finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 green pepper, finely diced
• 3 culantro leaves, shredded
• 300 g beef mince
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 tsp dried oregano, crumbled
• 1 tbsp white vinegar
• a handful of olives, chopped — optional
• vegetable oil, for deep frying

Method

1. Bind the cassava dough

   Rub the salt through the cassava flour, then add the warm water a little at a time, working it with your fingers until the meal clumps and holds a shape when squeezed. Cassava flour has no gluten to develop, so you are hydrating starch, not kneading: pour the water in all at once and you get a wet paste that will never roll, and no amount of extra flour brings it back.

2. Rest the dough and build the sazón

   Cover the dough and leave it while you cook. Meanwhile chop the onion, garlic, green pepper and culantro as fine as you can bear — this is the sazón, and any piece bigger than a lentil will tear the thin dough from the inside when you fold the turnover.

   20 min

3. Cook the filling down dry

   Sweat the sazón in a caldero with a spoonful of the oil, add the mince and break it up, then stir in the tomato puree, oregano, vinegar and olives. Cook it until the pan is genuinely dry — a wet filling steams inside the turnover, blows a seam open in the fryer and empties itself into the oil.

   15 min

4. Let the filling go cold

   Spread the mince on a plate and cool it completely, to room temperature at least. Warm filling melts the starch dough as you shape it, and the turnover slumps before it ever reaches the oil.

   30 min

5. Shape the turnovers

   Press a golf-ball of dough flat between two sheets of plastic until it is about 2 mm thick, spoon filling onto one half, and fold the plastic over to close it, sealing the rim by pressing with the edge of a saucer. Work with the plastic, never on a bare board: this dough cracks the moment it is asked to stretch, and a cracked seam is a leak.

6. Fry hot and drain standing

   Fry in oil at 175°C, two or three at a time, turning once, until the shells are blistered and pale gold — about four minutes. Crowd the pot and the temperature drops, the shells drink oil instead of sealing, and you get grease-heavy catibías that go leathery as they cool.

   4 min