Easy Ropa Vieja Stew

Birthday week. I am turning fifty-three on Sunday and the children are all coming and Mami is coming and the table will be full and the food will be my food and nobody else is cooking because on Carmen birthday, Carmen cooks, because cooking is how Carmen celebrates and if you do not understand this then you have not been paying attention for a hundred and thirty weeks.

Eduardo bought me pots. Again. A set of heavy-bottomed saucepans, professional grade, the kind you see in restaurant kitchens. He knows my love language is cookware. He has known this since 1988 when he gave me a set of wooden spoons for our first anniversary and I cried happy tears, which he initially mistook for disappointment until I explained that wooden spoons are the most romantic gift a man can give because wooden spoons say I see you, I see what you do, I see what you need. Eduardo has been seeing me for thirty years. The pots prove it.

Sofia made me a card. Handmade. Eighteen years old and still making handmade cards. I will protect this until my dying breath. The card had a drawing of a pot with steam coming out and inside the steam she wrote the names of every recipe I have taught her: sofrito, arroz con pollo, habichuelas, tostones, mofongo, flan. Each name in the steam, floating upward. I held the card and I thought: the teaching is working. The recipes are in the steam. They are rising. They are going somewhere I cannot see yet, somewhere in the future where Sofia is a nurse and also a cook and also a mother and also a keeper of the Delgado flame. The card is on my refrigerator now, next to Lucas first photograph and David New York Times review that I am waiting for. The refrigerator is my museum. The museum grows.

Mami called at 7:23 AM on my birthday. Right on time. The minute I was born. She said, Feliz cumpleanos, Carmen. Fifty-three. You are old now. I said, Mami, you are eighty-one. She said, I was always old. You are just arriving. I laughed. I laughed until I cried and the crying turned back into laughing and the laughing was the birthday and the birthday was the laughing and somewhere between the two my mother voice on the phone was the best gift — better than pots, better than cards, better than anything you can wrap in paper. Her voice. Her critique. Her love. That is the gift. That is every birthday gift I have ever needed.

When the whole table is full — Mami, the children, Eduardo and his beautiful pots — I do not make something small. I make something that has been cooking since morning, something the whole house can smell, something that says: this home is alive and the woman in the kitchen put her whole heart in the pot. Ropa vieja is that dish for me. It is shredded and soft and deep with sofrito and garlic and tomato, and it carries the same flavors I wrote on Sofia’s birthday card list, the ones rising in the steam. On a birthday, on my birthday, this is what I make — because celebrating with food means making the food that holds all of us together.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 2 hrs 30 min | Total Time: 2 hrs 50 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

2 lbs flank steak, trimmed
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 green bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 can (14-1/2 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce
1 cup beef broth
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup pimiento-stuffed green olives, sliced
Salt and black pepper to taste
Fresh cilantro, chopped, for serving
Cooked white rice, for serving

Instructions

Sear the beef. Pat the flank steak dry and season generously with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Sear the steak 3–4 minutes per side until deeply browned. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
Build the sofrito base. Reduce heat to medium. Add the onion and bell peppers to the same pot and cook, stirring occasionally, for 6–8 minutes until softened. Add the garlic, cumin, oregano, and smoked paprika and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Braise the steak. Return the seared steak to the pot. Pour in the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and beef broth. Add the bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 2 hours, or until the beef is very tender and pulls apart easily.
Shred the beef. Remove the steak to a cutting board. Using two forks, shred the meat into long, thin strips. Discard the bay leaves. Return the shredded beef to the pot and stir to combine with the sauce.
Finish with olives. Stir in the sliced olives and simmer uncovered for an additional 10–15 minutes to let the stew thicken slightly. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
Serve. Ladle over white rice and finish with a handful of fresh chopped cilantro. Serve hot, straight from the pot that someone who loves you gave you as a gift.

Nutrition (per serving)

Easy Ropa Vieja Stew — The Birthday Table Carmen Always Sets