Train journey. / Viaje en tren.

Recently my husband and I caught a train to visit the Brisbane EKKA (exhibition). It was nice to sit in cushion seats in air conditioning. The train traveled fast.

Once in a small town in Cuba my husband asked his friend what was wrong with getting the train? So my husbands friend laughed on his way up to the nearest train to show him what a Cuban train looks like inside.

For a Cuban to imagine my Australian husband hopping on a Cuban train is hilarious. I imagine him sweating heavily walking elbow to elbow amongst Cubans carrying sacks of rice, beans or fish on their backs.

Actually, if you compare traveling by train, they are not as terrible as buses, their disadvantage is that they are too slow, like doing a 50 km journey can take 3 hours. But you can have your seat and do not have to argue with anybody for it, the seat would be very hard anyway.

In this sort of trip you can see the real Cuba, a Cuba that is not glamorous at all. People will be selling goods and if you forget about the hard seat and the slow trip you can have fun watching and listening to the Cubans selling things like sweet cookies or roast peanut. People in the train, unless they are students, look pretty poor but are friendly.

I experienced the train one summer from Havana to Sancti Spiritus and it was almost unbelievable that I survived the heat; generally a Cuban train does not have air conditioning. Warning: Do not dare to go to the toilet.

On my trips to school or to Havana in 2001 I was never lucky enough to see any fast trains in Cuba .I thought it was a myth, everybody mentions it but nobody has seen one.

One night the train to Havana was cancelled and a friend and I slept in the train station holding our luggage as we could between our legs so nobody would rob us of our most precious possessions. Any possession for a Cuban is precious. As a student our worst nightmare was to be robbed.

Some days we were lucky we could buy a ticket paying around 3 dollars to the inspectors, but that night there was no train running so we could not travel either with the extra cash.

In 1837 Cuba was one of the first countries to have railway in Latin America and the Iberian world.

Custard-apple / chirimoya o anon.

Custard-apple fruit ( chirimoya)

This month is custard-apple season in Australia, as I see the fruit in every market. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I saw it here. Some locals do not know the fruit.

It is a fruit that brings to me memories of children in Cuba throwing stones at the tree in order to get the fruit down or asking the adults if it is ripe and counting days for it to be ripened. Most of the time we could not wait that long, the same story happens with mangos.

I like the custard-apple to give its gentle flavour to a milkshake. You must take the ebony seeds out before mixing its pulp with a cup of full cream milk, a tablespoon of condensed milk and some ice in the fruit blender; the result is a pale, creamy drink with a flavour that reminds me of vanilla and makes the effort of taking the seeds out rewarding.

Mango.

I do not know if every Cuban shares my enthusiasm for mangos but I know my brother does. To me this is the top fruit pick and I really miss them when the ripening season is too far away to wait. I also dream of making quick trips to Singapore or Hong Kong to catch up with their mango seasons there.

In Cuba it seems like we cannot wait either because children start eating them unripe. I was surprised it is completely normal to find unripe mangos in Asian dishes as a salad ingredient.

Recently I was so happy to get a box of Kensington Pride frozen mango cheeks. I feel so smart; imagine having tasty mangos when they are out of season.

I wondered why Australia offers other fruits like avocado, strawberries or pineapples year round but not my heavenly Kensington Pride mangoes. But anyway I smile thinking that if I did have them so often I would not put them on top of my list. I patiently wait for the season to start when summer arrives in the north.

This week I am over the moon with my box of frozen mangos, ah like a child with a box full of candy. Of course I have to do something special with it, I found in a book a recipe I want to try, called mango fool, it should go well with blueberries.

2 mangos or equivalent (5cheeks)
200 ml pouring cream
½ cup sugar or less

1. You must thaw the mangos and then put them in a food processor with the steel blade and puree them.
2. Mix mango and sugar and put away until needed again.
3. Whip your pouring cream.
4. Fold the cream into the mango and pour in mould to refrigerate. Cover for 2 hours.


A simpler version is to fold the mango puree in natural yogurt, something you can serve at breakfast straight away.

You can try also to make a delicious milkshake. Just after you have puree the mango in the food processor, put it in the blender with a cup of milk, a tablespoon of condensed milk and some ice cubes.

Roast suckling pig / lechon asado.

On very special occasions Cubans like to celebrate with a roast suckling pig cooking slowly in their backyards. The look of it screams “f i e s t a” party.

My mother’s father cooks the best roast suckling pig I ever tasted; he is a master at this. I tried to repeat the experience in Miami Florida as that city is like Cuba in America, but it did not happen to be that good, their pork tastes totally different, like a different animal, probably because the pigs diet is unlike what they eat in Cuba.

This is a Total Cuban experience; the roast suckling pig being delivered on the “bicitaxi”.
This time the pig was cooked to perfection at the local bakery. There were fears of rain and that would ruin the backyard cooking.

Coffee, rice and beans / Café, arroz y frijoles

Country side.

Flamboyan tree in Cuba.

I must say I have never seen in Cuba such an abundance of fruit as I saw on my last trip.
There were plenty of pineapples, a fruit that I would see rarely during my childhood. I think it could be due to recent government measures to increase food supplies by loosening tight controls over food distribution.Such laws have made it easier for farmers to produce fruit.

At the same time it was challenging to buy rice or beans, the most important nutrients in Cubans diet. In the last few months they have become scarce and expensive.

It felt like a punch to my stomach to know that my grandmother didn't have supplies of rice and beans because the decrease in the availability happened very fast.
Luckily we had some rice in our car for her.

My favorite Cuban coffee (Serrano) is no longer available in the Cuban shops, so this time I bought a different coffee in USA, Bustelo Cafe, a favorite of Cuban immigrants.

Later I read in the news that Cuban coffee production has decreased by 90 % and Cuba is now actually importing coffee and sugar. For several decades Cuba was a major exporter of sugar and coffee.

Soup / Ajiaco y caldosa.

Tamal.

Making tamal from fresh corn.

As winter days approach in the southern hemisphere we feel the need for a homemade stew, this makes me think of the Cuban ajiaco. This soup became very important for Cubans.

At the beginning of the Cuban food crisis in the early nineties the Cuban government organized for someone in every street to cook a huge stew known as "caldosa" every second night. Somebody would give a pigs head and every house would be asked to give at least one vegetable: a potato, a sweet potato, corn, plantain or tapioca.

Music would make everything seem to be a like party, a social gathering but it actually was an organized way of giving food to the hungry people, especially for the old and lonely, this vegetable soup may be their only food for that day.

Late at night my brother would get all excited and run home looking for a container to collect his soup and he treated it as a prize for his long wait.

Those where the years when people ate only cornmeal for lunch and dinner everyday and consequently we were hungry all the time because cornmeal only gives you a sensation of fullness for a very short time.

May / Mayo.

Mamey fruit.

Country side, Cuba.

On my last trip to my land I was stunned by the simple beauty of the Cuban country side as my eyes absorbed the beauty of the royal palm trees and the rich green background highlighting the flamboyant tree blooms.

In May the flamboyan trees give the country scenery a painting look with bright red colour concentrated in one spot or sparingly branches here and there as careless strokes from a brush.
Flamboyan flowers make the atmosphere look festive and the tree may look like it is trying on a red dress. This tree grows in sub tropical and tropical areas.

I think May is one month that feels like the real Cuba; the humid heat after a short April spring ripens the fruit, corn just ripening on the cob, mamey trees holding heavy fruit up high on top, custard apple season, lovely and peaceful cows with their calves and mangos hanging like earrings, getting ready for the next month.

Mamey is a fruit that also grows in Mexico which it is really hard to describe its flavour but every Cuban loves it in a milkshake, it has texture similar to an avocado and a rich orange colour flesh with a black seed.

Cooking in Cuba / Cocinar en Cuba

Cuban family picking fruit.

Cubans drinking guarapo, a refreshing drink made from sugar cane.

I am a Cuban now living in Australia, and emigrating here changed my thoughts on everything I knew. One of those things is food.

I could not find my Cuban rice and beans and I did not know how to cook them if I found them, so I was in deep trouble. Initially I did not like any of the Australian flavours. Luckily after starving for two months I managed to enjoy the sweet and spiced Australian food.

My first trip to Woolworths was mind blowing; my eyes must have been wide open because I could not believe what I saw: apple and banana mountains. I had never seen anything like that in my life before and I was not expecting it, such a variety of beautiful fresh food.

In Australia it is very common to gather around food and wine to taste the innovative combination of flavours while you enjoy the company of friends and loved ones. So this represents a positive experience. With this in mind Australians build their homes paying special attention to their kitchens. Their kitchens are made spacious, with lots of storage, open, and basically to cook and share with family and friends.

Now I am very passionate about food, and enjoy nothing more than spending an afternoon planning recipes and cooking. I have learnt to appreciate fresh produce, ingredients of great variety, spices and flavours from the Asian cuisines.

My new interest in food is very hard for my family in Cuba to understand. They have never experienced anything like what we have here .It is a very different approach. Like here we have hundreds of TV cooking programs, Cuban TV has not shown a cooking program since the early nineties. After the ex Soviet Union disintegration we had a food crisis, which remains to this day.

For some years cooking in Cuba was a very stressful thing, there was no food to cook or petrol for the stove, so women had to use charcoal which had drawbacks, it tinted our houses roof and walls black. Cuban women’s fingernails were tinted black too.

Those were the years when cornmeal replaced our traditional rice and beans on our plates everyday. Often there was no electricity and we had to take a piece of paper to the neighbor cooking with charcoal to be able to light our charcoal as there was a lack of matches too. If raining this was a challenging task.

So the Cuban approach to food is not pleasurable, it is food to fill you up and provide you with sufficient energy. Cuban kitchens are a closed small area, poorly illuminated and not enough benchtop space. Cubans do not have enough food to share so their kitchens are a reflection of this problem. The kitchens are very hot, with no air conditioning in a tropical climate.

My Australian husband noticed that some Cubans do not sit at the table to eat, they prefer to eat sitting on the floor in a corridor where some fresh air flows and the concrete floor is cooler.

I rarely saw men cooking or helping their wives in the kitchen and women there see cooking as demeaning. They dream of a day not having to cook and instead having prepackaged food where only a re heat is needed; the type of food I have learned is a poor nutritional choice. They would be better of with beans but they dislike spending time in their kitchens.

It was not always like this in Cuba, there is a recipe book written by a Cuban emigrant “Memories of a Cuban kitchen” by Mary Urrutia, where I learnt how people lived before 1959 and I was very surprised to find similarities of lifestyles in Cuba at that time and in Australia now. There were restaurants, beach houses and similar supermarkets to Woolworths at that time popularly called “Ten Cents”.

Today Cuba has lost a lot of its culinary heritage, a country where it is virtually impossible to find a cooking book or a recipe. To find Cuban recipes you must search recipes written by the Cubans that emigrated to the U.S. I find this terribly sad for a nation.