Day Five - Cuba

Hola! Today's stop around the food world is Cuba, which hopefully I'll get to visit one day now that we have actually opened up relations with them again (mojitos in Havana sounds like a pretty fantastic idea...)

The meal today was inspired by my boss's wife, whose mother is Cuban.  Andy, my boss, has told me stories about their trips to Miami to celebrate Christmas, which involve roasting lots of pigs, listening to great music, and being outside in the warm Florida air.  It's a night and day difference to the Christmases I spent in Maine...

In prepping for this month, I had asked Andy for some good Cuban recipes from his wife's family that he could share.  And he did that, but what he also did was offer an insight that I found to be pretty profound.  He said that it's often what a family does with the leftovers that really show's a culture's cuisine. For example, anyone can cook a turkey, and generally you'll do it the same as the next person.  But everyone has their own recipe for turkey pot pie, or you might prefer to make turkey salad and turkey chili as opposed to turkey soup.  What you do after the big meal is just as important as the big meal itself.

For Cuba, I actually started cooking on Sunday (at the same time I was cooking for Jamaica).  In a separate crock pot, I put a pork loin in on low and simmered it in Mojo marinade:

 

This was what Andy had recommended I use, as it's what his family uses when they cook their big Christmas meal.  It's a citrus based marinade, and you can normally find it Hispanic/Latino food section of your local grocery store. I let the pork loin go on low for about 8 hours.

I started early because for this particular country, I wanted to change things up a bit in terms of how I cooked the meal and when/where I ate it. Andy said that leftovers were a big part of cultural expression, and the Cuban sandwich is no exception.  Often made from the left over pork loin that you cook in Mojo, they sound almost like the equivalent of the New Englander sandwich you see after Thanksgiving (turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce).

So far, this project has consisted primarily of dinners (a late lunch in Jamaica being the only exception), and moving forward, most of the tour stops will also be the evening meal.  However, this whole project is not just about exploring different foods, it's about changing up my daily routine and trying new things.  And a change to my daily routine would be how I do lunch.

Typically, lunch for me is eaten at my desk (there are occasional excursions to local dive restaurants with some of my more adventurous colleagues).  I might step out and run some errands, but otherwise it's a sandwich or a salad and a yogurt.  Maybe some cut up veggies.  And that's about it.

But it doesn't have to be just that.  Lunch can be my time to recharge and refocus, something to look forward to instead of something I take for an hour each day and that's it.  So today, I decided to bring my leftovers in to the office and make myself a lunch of a Cuban sandwich and black beans and rice.


Black beans and rice

1 can black beans
1 cup rice, uncooked
3 cups water
A pinch of Spanish saffron
Liberal sprinkling of Adobo seasoning to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil

This was a very simple recipe, but one that Andy said was a staple in Cuban cuisine.  First, I added the rice, water, and saffron to a pot and set it to boil.

I let the rice cook until it was nice and tender, and then added the drained and rinsed can of black beans to the mix...

Next, I added a healthy amount of Adobo seasoning.  This can also be found in the Hispanic/Latino section of your neighborhood grocery store, and I've been told by several people that it is a staple of cooking in homes throughout the Hispanic and Latin American world.

I mixed all of this together along with the olive oil, and got a nice pot of black beans and rice...

Cuban sandwich

1 french bread roll (I know, I know, you're supposed to use Cuban bread.  Tell me where I can find it in the Greensboro area and that would be great.  For now, a substitute had to do.)

Pulled pork loin (I used the leftover here that I cooked on Sunday)

2 slices ham

3 pickle chips

2 slices Swiss cheese

Mustard

So here's where I got a little creative today. It was a left over sandwich, but it needed to be hot and grilled like a panini. Lacking a panini press at the office, I had to think outside the box...

What I did first was place the ham, pork, and cheese in our microwave here at work. This heated up everything and melted the cheese...

Next, I prepared the bread.  Simple stuff here, just mustard and pickle chips.  Then, I added the ham/pork/cheese to the sandwich.  Then...

...yup, that's a waffle maker.  Elizabeth and I got one as a wedding present, and I use it every so often.  Usually for a special weekend breakfast, but sometimes as a side for fried chicken.  However, I'd read somewhere how people used their waffle makers for all sorts of things, which is what sparked my idea this morning (that and I didn't have a press...necessity truly is the mother of invention).

I pressed down on the waffle maker for a couple of minutes, and then...

...ta da! It actually didn't come out half bad.  My boss gave it a thumbs up, which I take as high praise, and the folks in my office that ate them seemed to enjoy them (or, at the very least, were polite enough not to say anything).

I really enjoyed doing today's tour stop as a lunch because it was a nice change of pace (I don't have to cook tonight!). It might mean that I need to go back to the drawing board to see if there are any other countries ahead of me that could work as a lunch, or even a breakfast.  It'll be exciting to shake things up a bit.

Just as it was exciting to shake up my normal lunch.  I might not bring my waffle maker in again, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy the middle meal of the day.  And I'm still on the look out for good Cuban bread.  For now, I'll just take my sandwiches waffle shaped.