Papas Rellenas (Cuban Stuffed Potato Balls) for Krystal’s Virtual Baby Shower

This may not seem like your typical baby shower food, especially since it’s a more masculine “meat and potatoes” type of dish.  But, this baby shower is different.  We are celebrating my friend, Krystal, who blogs at Mrs. Regueiro’s Plate.  The theme our gracious host, Joelen, put together was to focus on both mama and papa’s-to-be heritage, which happens to be Filipino and Cuban, respectively.

Not too familiar with either cuisine, I did remember one experience with Cuban food while living in California.  A friend of mine introduced me to a Cuban bakery & café in Glendale where she insisted that I try their stuffed potato balls.  Although I had already stuffed myself with my lunch order there, I found myself wanting to fill up even more with these fried to perfection treats.  So, I knew this was what I had to make for Krystal’s Cuban themed celebration.

(From left to right: Jessica A., Joelen, Krystal, Jessica R., Me)

Before I talk about the recipe, let me talk a little about Krystal.  After communicating with her through blogging and Facebook, I had the wonderful privilege of hanging out with Krystal last November when attending the Foodbuzz Festival in San Francisco.  She is honestly one of the most genuine, fun, loving, super funny gals ever!  I’ll never forget when we were sitting together at the Foodbuzz gala dinner, watching Tyler Florence from the front row with our cameras and finding out we were both snapping underwear shots.   Sorry, Tyler, but it’s true! Here’s my best shot.  Krystal, care to share yours?
Krystal just has this charisma that makes you feel like you’ve known her forever.  Little “Cookie” (as the baby is currently named since they do not know the gender) is so lucky to have a mom like Krystal.  I have no doubt that Cookie will be loved by her parents while very well fed!

Now, about these fried Cuban potato balls. More popularly named Papas Rellenas, they are basically mashed potatoes formed into a ball and filled with a seasoned ground beef (picadillo), then fried to golden perfection.  After searching high and low for a promising recipe, I decided not to follow just one, but to combine my research and just go from there.  Because I try to avoid the messiness of frying food at all costs, I decided to try my hand at oven ‘frying’ them, which basically means just baking them at a higher temperature for about 20 minutes.  I didn’t really love the turn out, but I think it’s because of the Panko bread crumbs.  Normally, I love using Panko for breading, but not with these.

So, lessons learned here?  Stick with regular bread crumbs or flour, and fry these babies. You don’t have to have a deep fryer to do so.  Instead, let them fizzle in a layer of oil that is only deep enough to cover half the ball, then flip once during frying.  These take a while to form each ball, but once you have that plate full of fried goodness, you’ll forget about all that labor.

Krystal, I’m so happy for you and although we never got our chance to meet up a second time while I was also living in SoCal, I can’t wait until we our paths cross again!  Especially so I can meet that sweet baby girl… or boy… or girl?

(You can check out the round up of recipes for Krystal’s shower at Joelen’s blog.)