I’m on a quest to reverse engineer this Latin roast pork that I picked up at my school’s cafeteria. The dish depicted is actually a little on the dry side, but the last time I had it it was outstanding.There are green peppers and some other kind of vegetable in there, perhaps leeks. The recipes I looked at all had vinegar in it, and in retrospect that is what lent the pork it’s tart flavor. But it’s far more complicated than my amateur palette can discern, so I will have to rely on recognition after the fact.

The rice is colored, and it has red kidney beans and diced carrots in it. I assume that it was cooked with some sort of sofrito. As for how authentic this stuff is, that’s questionable. It is, after all, cafeteria food. Even so, it’s at the very least inspired by Latin flavor. I think garlic, dried oregano, cumin, and vinegar is the order of the day. I’m guessing that the green peppers and leeks (or scallions) are stewed and broken down similar to what happens in sofrito.

Photos taken by me. Images under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license.