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.

Hitch hiking, la botella.

This is a common way of traveling.

Cubans do a lot of walking everyday everywhere so I didn’t understand why here in Australia people wanted to walk or run. For us in Cuba, to get into a car is a big luxury, something that happens very rarely. So I can say people in Cuba are fit, most of them. In Cuba we travel to the university and to work by hitch hiking.

If it were necessary they would jump on a truck while it was moving to get a ride, scenes like you see on the movies. This type of action was not always a success, especially if you were not young. I remember doing it as a young woman on my way back from school, a sea of strong arms would offer to lift me into the truck. As I said this was not for fun, it was the product of necessity.

We travel like that, no matter the season of the year, raining in May, hot September, hurricanes in October or in the night, something you wish to avoid, but it may not depend on you. There is no reliable public transport in Cuba.

We would spend an entire day just to get home from one province to another. And you can see on the map of Cuba it is a small island. Some places would be more difficult at this task. My best friend used to travel from a town called Camajuani. She said that it was a very warm town because we could spend about 4 to 5 hours trying to get out of that place hitch hiking, sort of like the town wanted us to stay. My friend Ivan had to sleep one night on the road and wait until 6.00am, and then luckily a bus came along the road and he was able to get home. To me it was not nice to have lessons on Friday afternoon and then have to travel home hitch hiking, often in the night.

Many students would stay in the school and travel home once a month or so. But the majority would go home on the weekends to get clean clothes, home cooked meals and money to be able to survive at school, where the food provided was terrible. Also sometimes you were too far from your school doing some work experience at another school where you needed to buy your lunch, so it was not only a matter of that you wanted better quality food. Money was sometimes necessary too for traveling, in some places you were not able to move if you did not pay.


We depended on our parent’s money because at that time it was not possible for students to work, some boys would work during the two months vacation to be able to have some extra cash. Others would sell things illegally at school for this purpose.

I am not able to say if today things are better, but I know that you still can see a lot of people standing on the side of the road hitch hiking.

Pork, carne de puerco.

Roast suckling pig in Cuba

Asian pork belly

We Cubans crave for pork. It is part of our most traditional food: rice and beans, pork and tapioca (yuca) with mojo sauce. This is our dish for New Year’s Eve meal.

The tradition was that every family would keep a live pig until that day, up to the time of the animal’s sacrifice was due. So the day started with the animal’s screams, something that for animal lovers was horrible to hear, a bottle of rum would be at the scene of the crime.
I would be so upset about the killing that I did not want to know about eating meat in my childhood. I think my brother felt the same.

But times have changed since then and growing teenagers need protein, so I changed my mind about the meat, so pork now is my favourite food.

Here in Australia I do enjoy pork belly. This recipe is the one I prefer, it is my Australian version of the cuban feast. I could call it pork heaven, it is done in a crock pot, so it is really easy. It is great if you have visitors coming for supper as the house will be submerged in the spice’s aroma.

"Asian pork belly"

1kg pork belly
½ cup Chinese cooking wine
1/4 cup dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon tamarind concentrate
2 tablespoons honey
½ teaspoon sesame oil
4 cm piece fresh ginger chopped finely
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 teaspoon five-spice powder
1 star anise
1 dried long red chili
1 teaspoon Sichuan pepper
3 cups water

*Combine ingredients in a large bowl, add pork, cover and refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.
*Put the pork and marinade into the crockpot to cook for 6 hours.
* Serve pork with an avocado and coriander salad.

frogs, ranas

I think frogs are terribly ugly animals. I say so maybe because I am Cuban and I saw too many frogs in my life over there. They were like a pest.

The problem is that big ones have jumped on me when I least expected it, like when I just woke up in my school dormitory and went to have a wash, the animal was on the door and jumped on top of me and I went on running and screaming until I thought it jumped on somebody else, reality nightmare #1

Another time I woke up from my sleep thinking about a frog and straight away one huge monster frog jumped on my face, nightmare # 2

In Cuba frogs are seen as very ugly animals. In Australia most people have a ceramic or plastic one in their gardens, something that to me seemed odd.
Recently on a trip to St. George, Queensland, there were these beautiful small frogs, something I never thought I would say about this animal, only because they had a rich green colour and they were miniature. They look innocent.

Soap, jabon

In many cultures soap may not be an important item, something you never think about. In Cuba it is unbelievable how important it is. We did not think about it either until it disappeared from our houses in the early nineties when the Russian subsidies ceased. We now appreciate its value, it is common to hear somebody shouting “you are wasting the soap”, almost as worrying as wasting water. You have to understand how expensive soap is in Cuba and how using water without soap will not remove dirt in a humid tropical climate.

The thing in my country is that when the Soviet Union’s subsidies disappeared a lot of products disappeared too, but then when things improved again, some products were available and better presented in paper wrapping and better quality. The prices were now much higher. Quality soap could be borrowed like you would borrow a book, in case of emergency, like before being admitted to hospital.

The wrapping paper did impress us so much we did not want to throw it away. Children started collecting it, and compete. I think it was the beginning of a desperate hunger for material things, well, in a crowded room a door was open.

Before we saw perfumed soap being sold, women became very innovative, giving life to butter soap, which was deadly to our skin and clothes. This soap battle made us feel stronger, like we could handle any problem.