Puerto Rican ropa vieja

Remove the seeds from the green pepper and chop it; halve and chop the tomato; roughly chop the yellow onion.

Roughly chop three leaves of the herb.

Wash the cured ham and dice it; wash the ham bone.

Put the beef, chopped vegetables, herb, cured ham, ham bone and water in a 12 quart stock pot.

Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer, cover and cook 20 minutes.

Quarter the piece of pumpkin and quarter the potatoes; shuck the corn and break it into three pieces.

Add four pieces of pumpkin, four pieces of potato, three pieces of corn and the salt; keep boiling on a moderate heat, lid on, for one hour.

Remove the meat and reserve; strain the soup, returning the stock, potatoes, pumpkin, corn and ham and discarding the onion, green pepper and tomato.

Bring it back to a boil.

Break up the vermicelli, add it with the salt, and boil rapidly 20 minutes with no lid.

Dice the salt pork; wash and dice the cured ham; rough chop the green pepper, tomato and onion.

In a braiser over high heat, brown the salt pork and cured ham rapidly, adding a little lard if it does not render enough fat.

Add the vegetables, turn the heat to low and saute until tender, stirring.

Add the tomato sauce.

Shred the cooled beef by hand, peeling off any unwanted fat.

Break the potato into servable pieces and ladle one and a half cups of the broth in with the vegetables.

Add the shredded beef and the can of peas with its liquid and bring it all to a boil.

Adjust with more soup and a little salt, then add the corn pieces.

Serve with rice, the corn pieces on the side, topped with chopped herb.