Cuban Cuisine & Cookery

 

Larry acting as volunteer sous chef 🧄

Hello again, Blogonauts!

On today's Jaunticles menu, let's trace some of my experiences dining in Cuba.

(Since we were on a licensed tour, our group ate meals that most Cubans simply cannot afford. So with that in mind, take these comments and photos with a proverbial (or perhaps literal) grain of salt.)

We ate extremely well all along our travels in Cuba. Our 9-day tour covered the cost of all but a couple of meals. The portions were simply enormous, and to my surprise, they also included 2 or 3 drinks per meal. (In addition, we were often offered additional drinks during our daily tour stops.)

Coconut & Rum concoction

 

Our drinks were usually fortified with "Vitamin-R," aka, rum, rum, & more rum. Honestly, I've never done so much day-drinking in my life.

Breakfast in our casas particulares (private home bed-&-breakfasts) were usually similar to one another. (My guess is that the tour company set the standards for the hosts to meet.) Each day we had fruit, bread or pastry, eggs, some form of ham, cheese, and coffee.

Cuban coffee is very strong. Some folks in the group found it a bit too robust. Don't count me among them. 

Fruit, cheese, processed ham, & pastry (served before the eggs)

Eggs, cheese, tomato slices, & a fried hotdog

Americans are not allowed to eat in restaurants owned/operated by the Cuban government. As such, we ate our lunches & dinners at family-owned eateries, known as paladares.

Most of the time these meals were drawn from essentially the same menu options: Yucca, taro, plantains, salad vegetables, rice & beans, bread, and a selection of chicken, beef, pork, lamb (goat), fish, and/or (surprisingly) lobster tails. Personally, the food tasted more bland than I had expected. The near conformity of each menu with the others also made it hard to see any particular paladar as unique (except the one restaurant in Trinidad where I ordered Spaghetti Bolognese.)

This day I opted to have the pork for lunch.

Fried rice & vegetables (a unique dish, at the only lunch I bought on my own)

Cuban shredded beef (Photo taken under blue lights; I fixed the color, but the shadows are still blue.)

For one particular dinner, however, we were treated to a cooking demonstration at the Balcon del Valle near Viñales. Our chef Alienka asked for someone from the group to help prepare the meal. Others hesitated, so I valiantly volunteered.

It was a hoot! After I handed my phone to a fellow traveler to snap some photos, Alienka dressed me in a far-too-small hat and an apron, and then tucked a towel in my pocket.

Here Larry is being suited up before assuming his sous chef duties

I then set about grinding about a dozen cloves of garlic in a mortar-&-pestle, to which Alienka added some of the biggest oregano leaves I've ever seen. (The photo at the top of this post shows me hard at work pulverizing the garlic.) It was then combined with some chili peppers, oil, vinegar, pepper, & salt, and spooned over a cutting of pork. These were later cooked over a charcoal fire.

At another stop, we arrived in time to see the pork served for our lunchtime buffet being "freshly harvested" directly from the roast pig.

 

After viewing that last photo, if you need an optical "palate cleanser," i.e., something cute, here's a snapshot of a very alive, thriving pet hairless dog. (And no, Cubans don't eat dogs.)

Hairless Cuban pet dog

Hairless dogs are common in Cuba. Typically they have a semi-Mohawk atop their heads and a bit of fur toward the tips of their tails. The Cubans let the feral dogs scavenge freely, and their pets they keep well fed on table scraps.

I'm sure that's ample mealtime material for now. Feel free to post questions or comments below. (Just give me a hint who's leaving me a note.)

Next up: Cuban cultural highlights.

Blog to you later!