I made Baho! (Vaho)

This week I finally tackled a Nicaraguan dish. As I discussed in my previous post, the dish is baho (or vaho depending on the website, but they are spoken the same). Anyway, the dish is a fun meal that requires multiple days to finish, and is usually served on Sunday afternoons. In the video below, you can see three steps. The first step was marinating the brisket with the vegetables, garlic, and orange and lime juices. The next step was creating a steaming contraption and then wrapping the brisket, plantains, yuca, and vegetables all in banana leaves and steaming them for four hours. The last step was making the repollo (coleslaw salad with spices) and then placing that on the finished meal and eating!
I loved making this for a few reasons.  The first is that I got to stop by Flamingos, a local Latin American groceria, and buy interesting and new foods like hojas de platano (banana leaves), as well as practice my Spanish. However, after a brief struggle in translation with the butcher at Flamingos, I determined they did not have the brisket and had to go to whole foods (where I spent 3 times as much money than I did at Flamingos for literally one item at whole foods).
The other reason I enjoyed this recipe is that, after marinating the brisket all night and then steaming everything for four hours, I appreciated the entire process of making this meal. Its truly an all day, multi day affair, and the work and the wait was definitely worth it. My family loved it, and it was very new for all of us. The brisket had awesome citrus flavors that I have not ever tasted in meat before. The only things I would change is adding more yellow plantains and not adding any green ones, they ended up a little dry.  Overall, my family described it as wonderful, healthy, new, and wholesome. I particularly liked the added flair of serving it on banana leaves, it made it feel like I might be in Nicaragua, where I imagined I would be right now, but am still determined to get to someday.