HOW often have we wished, looking back on a delightful trip, that we might live over again, in the quiet of our home, some of the moments which contributed to its charm.
The senses of taste and smell have a strange potentiality to revive old memories and bring back the past.
Thus a faint scent of jasmin will evoke better than a volume of description, the magic fragrance of an Andalusian garden and the taste of guanabana cause ones brain to throb with visions of a white city in the dazzling sunlight bathed by the deep blue waters of a tropical sea.
In Europe—in France especially—a celebrated dish has often made the fame of an otherwise unknown town, and people come from afar to sample it. Up to date guide books never fail to inform the unsophisticated tourist that such and such a place is renouned for its duck or its bouillabaisse.
Visitors to Havana have often come away with the pleasing impression that the moro crabs and the rice and chicken eaten there were unique and very much worth while—to say nothing of the wonderful cocktails based on Bacardi rum, or the entrancing refrescos made with the juice of fantastic fruits.
Still, I am told, no one has been kind enough to tell them how they are made.
Cook books, to be sure, are as numerous as pebbles on the sea shore, but, somehow there’s always room for another if it fills a need.
This very small one is only a first aid manual for those who have tasted and would “like some more” of the good things partaken of during their stay in Cuba, and a bird’s eye view of a new culinary field.
People who have not visited the island must not imagine that the dishes mentioned in these pages are the only ones they will find on their hotel s bill of fare. Quite the reverse. Cuban hotels serve a cosmopolitan table: their chefs are almost always French and the menus of the Nacional, the Almendares, the Sevilla Biltmore, the Inglaterra or the Casino do not differ much from those one would find in corresponding establishments in New York or Paris.
In the homes of wealthy Cuban families French dishes alternate with national ones, forming a most happy alliance.
This little book, therefore, has no pretention of being an exhaustive treatise, not even a general guide to the Cuban table. The mode of preparing excellent cosmopolitan dishes may be found elsewhere. I shall limit myself to indicate the typical ones of the country, many of which are well worthy of being known and relished by a wider public.
It will surely be a pleasure for a hostess to give her guests a surprise, presenting them with an exotic dish right from the Caribbean, offering them a culinary novelty, which in these days is a prize—indeed a rare and coveted prize.
I do not refer to the strange concoctions evolved by eccentric iconoclasts, breaking every dietetic law and casting to the wind all traditions, such as we behold in some incongruous and barbaric salads; nor can we call a novelty futuristic combinations like those Marinetti used to suggest, red herring with raspberry sauce, for instance—a veritable gastronomic nightmare.
No—we hold that the cuisine of a country is one of its psychological aspects, an accumulation of slow growth, almost a synthesis of its civilization.
Thus the food of France is delicate, refined, infinitely varied, agreeably presented, exacting as to the quality of its raw material. Cooking there is an art and the appreciation of its fine points a science.
In Italy, flavors are more pronounced. Italy has some splendid dishes, but fine cooking is less general there than it is beyond the Alps.
Spain has but a poor gastronomic reputation in spite of several excellent basic combinations. The excessive use of oil and onions is generally repellent to those who are not to the manner born.
German cooking, although somewhat heavy, is better than is supposed, while England comes in the rear for the monotony and tastelessness of its table. Only first class beef and mutton, (this is doubtless A number one), elementarily prepared, saves it from utter condemnation.
Just as cooking in the United States has evolved from the original simplicity of the English puritan’s bill of fare gradually influenced by the diverse foreign elements that integrate its population, the cuisine of Cuba, though directly derived from Spam, its mother country, has been modified and refined by the products of a different soil and the requirements of a different climate, with possibly a French touch imported from Santo Domingo. (After the negro upheaval in the beginning of the XIXth Century, thousands of French descended whites emigrated from Sto. Domingo and Haiti to our island.)
Thus the national Olla of Spain is converted here into the Cuban Ajiaco; a thick soup, of course, but composed of entirely different ingredients. Instead of beef and ham, we find pork. Instead of potatoes, carrots, turnips, cabbage, garbanzos (chick peas) etc. we have sweet potatoes, yams, malangas, bananas, corn &.
Much less oil is used in Cuban cookery than in Spanish and we are more critical here than they are over seas about its quality—at least about its rankness.
Onion and garlic are used in Cuban cooking, to be sure. But “this requires another chapter”, as Cervantes would say.
The excess of onion and garlic is offensive to delicate palates, without doubt, but its judicious use is most commendable.
A very small amount imparts a relish which few things can equal. The evil lies in its exaggeration. Just as musk and civet, two ill smelling substances, are found at the base of most exquisite perfumes—only in such minimum quantities that their presence is seldom detected, garlic and onion, knowingly employed, bring out the flavor of the choicest viands which would lose their zest and become flat without it. Like most spices, its descriminating use is a virtue, its excess, a vice.
Unlike that of other Spanish American countries, Cuban cookery is very sparcely spiced. Cayenne pepper is unpopular, Tabasco tabooed; only sweet peppers, green or red, are favored.
Fats and oils are often too abundantly used in Cuba; an unfortunate legacy from Spain, but the best cuisine is more chary of them. Less fried food appears to-day on Antillian tables than formerly. The study of dietetics has taught the more enlightened that in the tropics sugar, instead of fat, should supply the the calories our organism requires.
The Creator has shown us what to eat by causing the earth to bring forth the things essential to the proper nutrition of man in each latitude.
The Esquimo needs fat, strong combustible for an intensely cold climate; therefore polar regions furnish him with the greasy flesh of bears and oil giving seals and fish. Coming southwards, wonderful cattle appear and superior dairy products; the temperate zone furnishes delicious poultry, fine fruits and vegetables, and so on until we reach the tropics, where meat is less good, butter only middling and northern fruits, such as apples and pears, non existant.
On the other hand Nature has lavishly provided this land with the finest fish in the world, right out of the Gulf Stream, unequalled crabs and lobsters, an almost infinite variety of vegetables—tropical and others—and luscious fruit, such as is only found in Paradise.
Pork is extensively used and we must frankly acknowledge that its quality is excellent, being more delicate in flavor and more tender than in the North.
Sugar, the formost national product, plays a great part in Cuban food : sweets are perhaps too preponderant. But one should not forget that it is better for the organism in the tropics to get its calories from sugar than from meat. In fact, a great specialist once told me that the popular “pan con timba” (a slang expression to denote a roll containing a slice of guava paste, a makeshift for a meal for the poor and often the consolation of hungry street urchins, to be obtained for two cents at any bodega), was an ideal combination, as it contains cereals, sugar and fruit, a perfectly balanced food product, better for the native, probably, than a beefsteak, and quite as nourishing.
Rice is, in a measure, the staff of life down here. We eat almost as much of it as Orientals do, and know how to prepare it. Rice appears on creole tables, rich or poor, twice a day and largely substitutes bread, without excluding it.
To prepare rice, like coffee, is simple enough yet most difficult to accomplish to perfection. White rice—of course—should be well cooked, and tender, each grain separate from its neighbor without being dry.
Colored rice, that is rice with the addition of chicken, fish, and various condiments, is easier to prepare although apparently more complicated.
Corn is another important element in the repertoire of Cuban cookery and the tamale one of its masterpieces. Not the dry, hard article made from yellow meal highly peppered, known in the United States through the Mexican variety, but the delicious substance made from fresh corn grated from the cob and seasoned in the happiest and most successful way—a real inspiration.
Africa has yielded several contributions to West Indian foods, note worthily okra, known as quimbombo. Southerners will probably enjoy it more than the inhabitants of the northern States.
The banana, which has become within the last twenty years a world staple, is a prime factor here, seen in endless varieties. The fruit—from the tiny date banana to the popular Johnson and the cooking vegetable, which goes through a whole gamut, and is eaten green, half ripe, ripe and over ripe; fried, boiled, baked, broiled or stewed.
But the following pages will tell you all about it.
The preparation 01 some of the marvellous beverages—alcoholic and otherwise—which have made Havana famous will surely not be amiss in this little book.
May you be able to procure yourselves, though far from here, the proper ingredients with which to concoct them!
I wish to express my appriciation to Mr. Conrado W. Massaguer and Mr. Fedenco Edelmann for their kindness in drawing the vignettes.
Selections from the book “Cuban Cookery. Gastronomic Secrets of the Tropics, With an Appendix on Cuban Drinks by Blanche Z. De Baralt. Editorial “Hermes”, Havana, Cuba, 1931”
