C is for Cuba

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.