Since my
daughter lives in Los Angeles, I usually don’t get to see her often. But, she was here for Thanksgiving (see “A is
for Afghanistan”) and came to DC again on her East-coast tour during winter
break. A big treat for me, and a big
treat for her – getting two alphabet meals in one month! This is also the first time, for this round
of cooking through the alphabet, that my eldest son and his girlfriend could
join us. But, they live just two
buildings away, so I think they’ll get a lot of chances before I hit “Z”. My mother-in-law was also able to join us,
and I promised not to make things too spicy!
For the “C”
meal I chose Cuba because over the years, I have seen great Cuban food in
restaurants but have not been able to eat any of it due to keeping kosher. Looking online, I was not disappointed in the
variety of mouth-watering recipes. It
was just an issue of being able to find, or adapt, recipes for the constraints
of kashrut.
The
Appetizer:
It is cold
here these days; not as cold as in Pittsburgh, where we last lived, but cold
enough to warrant a hearty soup for an appetizer. Black bean
soup sounded like just the right thing!
The only issue was that it called for ham hock (definitely not
Kosher!). I solved this using some beef
marrow bones and a little bit of Liquid Smoke, a substitute option I found online. And, of course, I did not use sour cream for
the garnish, as the recipe suggested.
The soup was
quite easy to make, but I had to start well in advance to soak the beans
(overnight) and cook the soup for 4-5 hours.
In tasting it before serving, we found it to be fairly bland. Looking at other recipes for Cuban black bean
soup, I found that most of them added a range of herbs and spices. Taking from this
recipe, I added oregano, cumin and
bay leaf, and I also added another half an onion. The end result was delicious – hearty and
rich, with a subtle smoky flavor. The
flavors from the oregano, cumin and bay leaf melded well with the beans and
meaty flavor from the bones. The soup
was a big hit with the guests, rating 6 out of 7.
The Main
Dish:
Many Cuban
entrees are made with pork, so they were not options. Fortunately, one of the recipes that various
sites declared as a Cuban “national dish” is made with beef and no dairy. Ropa Vieja (“old
clothes”) is finely shredded flank steak (long strings of beef, looking like
ragged clothes) with peppers, tomatoes, and olives. How can you go wrong (unless you don’t like
olives, like my partner)? Well, one way
you can go wrong is when you go to the butcher and find out that flank steak is
not a kosher cut of meat. In my defense,
we very rarely eat beef, so I was unaware which cuts are, and are not, kosher. The internet suggests skirt or hanger steak,
which unfortunately the butcher did not have.
The internet also suggested not
to use beef
chuck. We were thinking maybe
brisket, but, in the end, the butcher convinced us to try top of the rib roast. That’s why he’s the butcher – it was an
inspired choice. The meat was very
flavorful, and pulled into strips just like in all the online pictures of ropa
vieja. I did not use capers or cilantro
as the recipe suggest (my son and daughter both have that gene that makes
cilantro taste like soap). In addition I doubled the amount of cumin and
oregano in the recipe, which helped produce a very flavorful and vibrantly
colorful sauce, which was especially good mixed with the rice (see below). Overall, the guests gave it a 6.4 rating, and
my mother-in-law declared that this was the best dish of the meals I had made,
so far. A definite keeper!
The Starch:
Ropa vieja
is typically served over rice. I did not
want to make just an ordinary white rice, so chose to make Cuban
Yellow Rice. I used regular white
rice, rather than my usual choice of basmati, so that it would not interfere
with the other flavors. There were no
alterations to the recipe, except for using pareve margarine rather than butter
and, of course, kosher chicken broth.
Preparing the rice was a bit more involved than many rice dishes,
needing to stir the rice while it browned, before adding the liquid. That was something I had not counted on in my
schedule for when to make what dish, so I ended up frantically shifting between
the rice and the vegetable. The end
product, though, was worth it – a flavorful dish that harmonized very well with
the ropa vieja sauce. The guests gave it
a 6.4 rating, same as the ropa vieja.
Not sure if the rating was due to the rice itself or the rice-and-sauce
combination. Personally, I gave the rice
a 5 – good, but not great.
The Vegetable:
For the
vegetable, I wanted to try something really different and quintessentially
Cuban. Web sites indicated that Yuca
Con Mojo (yuca/cassava root with mojo sauce) would be a good
option. Maybe I should have been wary
after the difficulties with the cassava flour in the Brazilian
meal, but I was feeling adventuresome.
The recipe site suggests using frozen yuca, which I found in our local
market (specializing in Hispanic and Asian foods), along with naranja agria, a bitter orange juice
that is essential to the mojo sauce.
OK, so not
all experiments turn out well. This one
had mostly negative ratings, both because of the texture of the yuca and the
bitter taste of the sauce. Personally, I
liked it (and am continuing to eat a large amount of the leftovers), giving it
a 5, but that was the high-water mark.
One other guest gave it a 5, and the rest gave it ratings of 1, 2 or 3
(average 2.0). Not a keeper…
The Dessert:
I usually
don’t make dessert with the meal, but in searching Cuban recipes, I came across
a mention of a traditional Christmas dessert - Turron de
Coco. It has coconut and chocolate –
think Mounds Bar! It also has sweetened
condensed milk. So, what better than
turning a Cuban Christmas treat into a Kosher Chanukah treat by making it
pareve. A search on the internet found a
recipe for sweetened
condensed coconut milk – just what I needed! Making the sweetened condensed milk from scratch
wasn’t hard, but very time consuming.
Fortunately, I started early, so it did not interfere with the cooking
madness late in the day. Because there
was so much coconut already, I replaced the coconut milk called for in the
recipe with plain water, which seemed to work out fine. The dessert looked great, and was very
chocolatey and coconutty. Apparently, too
coconutty for most tastes; while I gave it a 5, the other guests gave it 2’s
and 3’s – even from those who liked coconut.
I also found the texture unpleasant – I probably did not use finely enough
shredded coconut.
And, as a
final festive touch, I made mojitos, a
typical Cuban drink with rum, mint, sugar and lime. So, be aware: all the ratings that the guests
gave need to filtered through the fact that plenty of mojitos were consumed
during dinner! And, maybe not
coincidentally, the mojitos were rated a 6.5, highest of any other of the
dishes in this meal. Overall, although
two of the five dishes had significant negative ratings, the guests felt that
the soup, meat and rice were enough to make this a very successful meal.
Up next: Denmark!
Should be quite a change from the first three meals.
