Latino Picadillo

This dish is really a type of stew, often served with rice, but also used as a filling for empanadas (I believe more so in Puerto Rican cuisine) or other meat filled pastries. It is made in many countries with Latino populations or Spanish influences, including the Philippines, as Spain ruled that nation from the 1500s until 1898. No matter the country, its basic ingredients are ground meat with various vegetables and spices. I went through several recipes each from the cuisines of Puerto Rico, Cuba and Mexico to make my own version of the dish, which I served with rice. So if you like my recipe, give me all the credit, but it's okay to blame Cubans, Puerto Ricans or Mexicans, if you don't like it (you don't think I'm taking the blame, do you?). I'm going to tell you, this dish was absolutely DELICIOUS! It is something of a cross between bean-less chili and a Sloppy Joe mixture. 

Regular readers here know that I'm not into "chop, chop, chop .... dice, dice, dice ... mince, mince, mince ... and measure a quarter teaspoon of this ingredient and an eighth of a teaspoon of that ingredient." Understandably, if you were going to use this dish for an empanada filling, you would want the vegetables to be finely chopped, but since I used it purely as a stew with rice, I did not finely chop all of the veggies, but I didn't leave them in big chunks either. I've noted how I cut the ingredients in the list below. I know the list looks intimidating, but most of these ingredients are things most people already have at home, or they are relatively easy to find.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs. ground beef (I used 80-20 meat to fat ratio)
1 large onion, chopped (I chopped it roughly, not finely; in fact, I chopped it so roughly, I must have felt sorry for it, because it brought tears to my eyes.)
5 large cloves of garlic, chopped
1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 each, chopped: a medium green bell pepper, a medium red bell pepper, and a medium yellow bell pepper (I must admit, when I went to buy the peppers, the store had a neat package with all of the above already cut in one package. Like liquid, I take the path of least resistance, so that's what I bought. I'd say from experience that the amount of each was from a medium sized pepper.)
1 serrano chili pepper and 1 red fleshy chili pepper (the serrano about 2" long and the red chili about 3" long, which the store simply had labeled as "red chili peppers," and they were a little less hot than serranos), chopped (I used the serrano with seeds and all, but I only used the thick flesh from the red chili, no seeds). I like spicy hot food, and these two peppers did not make the stew too hot at all for my standards, but if you do not like much heat at all, you can use only the flesh from the serrano too, which will cut down on the heat considerably; but remember, this dish will make a medium pot of stew, so two chili peppers are not really all that much).
about 1 tablespoon of dried Mexican oregano (here is where I used my own judgment rather than measuring it out, and Mexican oregano is a bit more potent, but you can use regular dried oregano and I'm sure Pancho Villa won't visit you in a nightmare or two.)
about 1 tablespoon of ancho chili powder (again the measurement was guesswork on my part. If you don't have ancho chili powder, just use any chili powder, or you could leave it out.)
about 1 tablespoon of cumin (I used guesswork for the measurement)
2 packets of  Sazón Goya with Coriander and Annatto (if you don't have this, it is a Latino seasoning that is easily obtainable in the Latino section of the supermarket or any Latino market. I bought a small box of 8 packets for about $1.75. There are different types, but the one with coriander and annatto should be used for genuine flavor and color, otherwise, I can't guarantee Pancho Villa will not visit you in at least one nightmare).
10 extra large pitted green olives (I quartered these) 
about two tablespoons of capers (I suppose you could chop these, but I left them whole)
about 1 tablespoon of brown sugar (I used dark brown, but light will do fine)
1 14 oz. can of diced tomatoes, with juice * 
2 medium potatoes (already cooked) cut into bite-sized pieces (I used the small red skin potatoes in a microwave bag and I used 6 fairly small potatoes, which I'm equating to 2 medium potatoes. I saved the rest of the cooked potatoes to be sliced up for my breakfast home fries.)
about 2 tablespoons of raisins soaked in rum (I simply put the raisins into a small cup and poured in the rum to cover. I let them sit for about 30 to 45 minutes while I was fixing the dish. Drain the raisins before adding to the recipe, but don't throw away the raisin flavored rum, it is very good ... ahhhhhh, at least that's what I've been told.) 
1 tablespoon of salt, if desired, but the Sazón and the olives will have salt, and in my case, I served the stew with rice, and I used a package of Carolina Yellow Rice I already had, and it has salt, so I added no extra salt to the dish whatsoever.

* You can also add 1 15 oz. can of tomato sauce, if you want the stew to be more moist. I added an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce to some of the leftover stew and made it into a Sloppy Joe mixture, which I put on hamburger buns. 

Start with a large skillet or medium size sauce pan. Add the oil and heat on medium and then add the ground beef and saute it for about 4 to 5 minutes. Add the onion, peppers and garlic, continue cooking on medium low heat for another 2 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Add the chili peppers, stirring to mix in. Reduce heat to medium low. After about a minute, add the oregano, cumin, chili powder and seasoning packets (also the salt, if using it), stirring to mix everything well. While my dish was not too dry by this time, I can imagine it could get that way, so add a couple of tablespoons of water, if necessary. Stir in the brown sugar, then add the olives, capers and tomatoes with juice (this is why you shouldn't add too much water earlier, since you will be adding the juice of the tomatoes), again stir to mix well. After a couple of minutes add the already cooked potatoes, then add the drained raisins. Let the stew gently simmer for at least another 15 minutes, but longer is desirable, but be sure to occasionally stir. Again, "if" the mixture gets too dry, add a little water, or regular tomato juice if you happen to have some already opened (if so, you could add this in place of the water earlier). Let the dish sit for a few minutes before serving. As I noted, I served it with yellow rice, because I had some already in the house, but white rice is traditional. 

WORD HISTORY:
Seal-In this case, this is not the word for the animal of that name, but rather the stamp used to close a document to give it validity of authority and to show it has not been opened. Of course there are some variations in the meaning, including for the verb form, meaning "to close something off securely." It is related to "sign." The origins of this word are uncertain, although some Indo European root is often suggested as a possible source.^ Anyway, it goes back to Latin "signum," which meant "sign, mark." This then produced Latin "sigellum," a diminutive^^ which meant "small figure/figurine, small marking/engraving." This gave Old French, a heavily Latin-based language, "seel," with the meaning "a wax seal for documents." This was carried to England by the Normans and it was borrowed into English in the 1200s. Close relatives of English, including German and Low German, also borrowed the word, although I believe they borrowed it directly from Latin, thus they still spell it with the "g" (German has "Siegel" and Low German Saxon has "Segel").

^ One root suggested usually had a meaning of "cut;" thus the notion of "sign," since our ancestors "cut" into wood or other materials to make a "sign." However, another root meaning "tell, say, point out, point to," has also been suggested, as has a root meaning "follow." The root meaning "cut" (Indo European "sek") seems more convincing, but I'll leave the question open. 

^^ A diminutive is a way of expressing a word to show it as being small or endearing. This is typically done by adding a suffix to the base word, as in: pig and the diminutive form piggy or piglet, cigar and cigarette, duck and duckling, drop and droplet, goose and gosling, mom and mommy, dad and daddy.