Spiced Tomato-Stewed Ground Beef, Potato, and Raisins

In Tagalog, the name of this dish tells you how it’s made: Giniling comes from the verb meaning “to grind.” A Cuban friend of mine calls it picadillo, from the Spanish picar, to chop; for both of us, the recipe is a legacy of foreign occupation that we made our own.

I remember it as an after-school meal, a simple hash of ground beef, onions, and garlic, with raisins for little pops of sweetness, all bound together by ketchup—not unlike the American sloppy joe. Sometimes we’d toss in