Puerto Rican pasteles, like the excellent ones served at the Freakin Rican in Queens, are “a project, not a quick fix,” Oswald Rivera writes in his 2002 cookbook, Nuyorican and Bodega Recipes.
It is true that the bacalaitos at the Freakin Rican in Astoria, Queens, are not quite as big around as the ones you will see browning in veritable caldrons of oil over wood fires at kiosks scattered ...