Is this the way to Aji Amarillo?

Nuevo Latino sounds like a dance - a new way to do the lambada, maybe - but it's a style of cooking, the latest to hit our shores. With the recent opening of Cube & Star in London's Hoxton, and last year's star turn, Armadillo (winner of the Best American Restaurant at the 2004 Tio Pepe ITV London Restaurant Awards), nuevo Latino is picking up pace.

 

And then there's Destino, opened by Gaucho Grill Restaurants in November 2003, and the seven-strong Gaucho Grill chain itself, which, although based on Argentine cuisine, has since been souped up with nuevo Latino touches.

 

And therein lies your source - Cuban-American chef Douglas Rodríguez, the Gaucho Grill's executive chef, who first coined the phrase back in 1995 when he published a cookbook of the same name (published by Ten Speed Press, now on its sixth imprint).

 

Rodrguez developed this style of cooking when he was head chef at the Cuban-inspired Yuca, in the Coral Gables area of Miami, Florida. He then went on to open the highly acclaimed Patria restaurant in New York, where he stepped up the cuisine a few notches. It proved hugely popular, and nuevo Latino has been a permanent fixture on the US restaurant scene since the mid-1990s.

 

But what is nuevo Latino? Pick-and-mix flavours from across Latin America, combined with classical cooking techniques and an abundance of different chillies. Why has it taken so long to get to us? The USA has a large Hispanic community and, of course, it's nearer to South America. Is that about right? "Yep, you've about got it," replies Rodrguez, sitting in a deep leather armchair in the Alvear Palace hotel in Buenos Aires.

 

Rodríguez has come to the Argentine capital to catch up with the food scene for his employer, Gaucho Grill Restaurants. A lot has appened here since the economic crash four years ago. Foreign investment is beginning to pour in and there's a new vibrancy to the city, reflected in the flurry of boutique hotel openings and hot new restaurants - Casa Cruz and Sucre, to name two.

 

Ecuador and Peru While he has travelled extensively in Latin America, it is from Ecuador and Peru that Rodríguez gets the most inspiration. "They have a great repertoire of dishes," he says. "There's not a lot of technique or layering of flavours, but they have a true cuisine. A Peruvian would rather go barefoot than give up a ceviche lunch. I can think of seven dishes from Argentina but could name you 100 dishes from Ecuador."

 

And before I mention Cuba's rather more restricted cuisine, based on rice and beans, Rodríguez launches into his life story. "I wasn't actually born in Cuba, you know," he tells me. "My parents left pre-revolution, in 1958. I've still got loads of cousins there but I've never been."

 

His parents settled in Manhattan, where his father ran a chain of barber shops and his mother was a banker. "It was a middle-class upbringing, a sheltered life," Rodríguez says. In fact, it was while his mother was out at work that young Douglas got the cooking bug - from his babysitter, a Cuban neighbour.

 

And he used to watch Julia Child's cooking shows on TV. "She captured my imagination," he remembers. He bought his first cookbook (by Julia Child) at 11 years old and his first set of pans at 12, with a loan from his mother. "The first thing I cooked with them was a French onion soup," he says. "It was pretty damn good."

 

His family moved to Miami soon after, and he got a weekend job working in the kitchen of a family friend's hotel. "It was my job to sort out the stock," he says, "but one day I spilled some on my foot and burned it badly, but I went to work the next day with it bandaged. The chef took a liking to me because I was eager to learn."

 

He worked in a kitchen through high school, first as a short-order breakfast cook then, after two years at catering college at Johnson & Wales, as head chef of a Californian-style caf run by Rodríguez and a bunch of friends, paying the freeholder in meals instead of rent.

 

"Back then," he says, "it was all gourmet pizzas and pasta, Wolfgang Puck-style. But I started adding subtle nuances of Latin ingredients to the dishes."

 

Those dishes included the likes of plantain linguine with roast garlic, and black bean pappardelle with bacon, roasted tomatoes and black bean sauce, becoming even more Latin American as time went on. "No one else was doing anything like it," remembers Rodríguez.

 

Tutti-Frutti Then, at 23 years old, he got the opportunity to open a more upmarket Latin American restaurant in Coral Gables, west of Miami Beach. Called Yuca, it sported dishes such as plantain-crusted mahi-mahi, and guava-glazed barbecue ribs.

 

"There was the whole tutti-frutti thing going on in Miami back then," Rodrguez says. "Papaya with lamb, mango salsa with fish - none of it has survived, except in the more touristy restaurants. And except in the interest in pure Latino cooking."

 

After six years at Yuca, Rodríguez was offered the chance to go to New York to open something smarter still. Patria opened in 1994.

 

There was nothing else like it in New York," he says "You couldn't get a table there before 10pm in all the six years it was open. It wasn't just about the food, it was the whole vibe - the interior, the design, the cocktails. Did you know that we single-handedly kickstarted the craze for the Mojito?" And this time the wine list was purely South American. "They loved it," he says. "New Yorkers love being educated. This was tortilla-free Latin cooking."

 

He turned classic dishes on their head. Oysters Rodrguez is his take on the Rockefeller: a raw oyster is breaded, then deep-fried and served on a bed of fufu (a mash made with ripe plantain) with bacon, sautéd spinach and horseradish.

 

And Patria is credited with introducing the first ceviches to New York - it made Rodríguez's name. The TV shows followed, as did three more books (the latest is The Great Ceviche Book, published by Ten Speed Press, with one on Latin pastries planned for next year).

 

Then it all went pear-shaped. Rodríguez won't be drawn on his darker hours; suffice it to say that he planned to open an even smarter joint (he was aiming for the top US accolade of four stars - Patria was one of only 17 restaurants in New York with three stars) but he fell out with his business partners and lost out on Patria, too.

 

Caught between a rock and a hard place (in his own words), he opened an easy-going ceviche bar called Chicama (now under different ownership), then the first of his four current restaurant businesses: a lively Cuban-inspired restaurant in Philadelphia called Alma de Cuba; followed by nuevo Latino restaurant Deseo in the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona, which he checks up on monthly; Ola in Miami (a more relaxed Patria); and Ola Steak, which opened in Coral Gables in April this year.

 

And then there's the Gaucho Grill contract, of course, which began last year.

 

Operations director Donald Storey was inspired by Rodríguez's cookbooks and went looking for him. "I've been racking up those air miles ever since," grins Rodríguez. He travels to London once a month to check up on things. As executive chef, he designs all the menus for both Destino and the Gaucho Grills, standardising the recipes, visiting all the restaurants, tasting the food and writing regular reports.

 

He also sources a few of the restaurant chain's ingredients. Such as? "Canned yuca, corn nuts and dried chilli paste," he replies. Not forgetting the aji Amarillo - a yellow chilli pepper with a moderate heat level and wondrously passion-fruity overtones that works particularly well in dressings and marinades. "It's already on lots of menus in the USA," he says, "and it will become indispensable in our kitchens. It's what the sun-dried tomato was to the seventies and what balsamic vinegar was to the eighties."

 

You heard it here first.

 

Rodríguez uncut

 

What's the oddest thing you've eaten on your travels in Latin America?

 

Guinea pigs. They specialise in them in Cuzco. You actually hear them being killed. Then they bring it whole to the table with a radish stuffed in its mouth. All I can remember is the crunch of tiny bones. They cook them like rabbits in Peru.

 

What's the best thing you've eaten?

 

The chilli paste in Ecuador - they bring it to the table and you dip your bread in it. It's like a dry chimichurri.

 

What's your favourite sauce?

 

Tomato ketchup. On a trip to Spain once when I was a kid, I was given tortilla and I wouldn't eat it without ketchup, so the chef made some up fresh for me - though I prefer the stuff in a bottle.

 

What's your favourite read?

 

The Painted Word, by Tom Wolfe

 

What do you think is the Next Big Thing?

 

Aji Amarillo - a fruity, yellow chilli pepper. It's the ingredient that has most affected the American pantry. It works well with everything.

 

Carbonada Criolla

 

Ingredients (Serves six to eight)

 

1 large (3.5kg) calabaza (Caribbean squash)
55ml flour
1tbsp Hungarian paprika
1tbsp ground white pepper
1tbs salt
1tbs dried oregano
1.4kg boneless beef shortribs, cut into 2.5cm-wide strips
55ml balsamic vinegar
1 white onion
5 cloves garlic
3 stalks celery, diced
3.8 litres beef stock
2 bay leaves
1tsp ground cumin
2 ears sweet corn, shucked and cut into 1.5in-thick pinwheels
2 carrots, peeled and cut into thin rounds

 

Method

 

Clean the outside of the calabaza. With a sharp knife cut a 14cm-diameter circle around the stem and life off the "lid". Scoop out the seed and flesh, being careful to leave about 1cm of flesh all around the inside. Cut scooped flesh into 1.3cm pieces.

 

Combine the flour, paprika, chilla powder, white pepper, salt and oregano. Add the shortribs and coat evenly.

 

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Brush the inside of the calabaza and the underside of the lid with 2tbs of the oil. Put both, flesh side up, in a deep roasting pan and bake for 15 minutes. Cool.

 

In another mixing bowl, gloss the peach slices with balsamic vinegar. Set aside.

 

Heat the remaing 2tbs of oil in a stockpot over a high heat. Add the shortribs and brown well on all side, about 12 minutes. Add the onion, garlic, and celery, an cook for five more minutes. Add the stock, bay leaves, and cumin and bring to a boil. Decrease the heat to low, cover, and simmer for about 1½ hours.

 

Uncover the stockpot and add sweet corn and carrots. Increase the heat to high and bring the soup back to a full boil. Boil for 10 minutes, then add the calabaza and peaches. Stir and cook for 10 more minutes.

 

Carefully ladle the soup in the calabaza shell. Cook with lid on in the oven for 10 minutes.

 

At the table, remove the calabaza lid, then ladle the hot soup into bowls and serve.