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Fidel


I recently saw the documentary 638 Ways To Kill Castro, and I found the man fascinating. Not that I agree with the way he runs his country, or with his ideology, but boy, you gotta admire the guy for his cojones. The dictionary should have a picture of him under the entry "underdog."

Anyway, I will not go into the state of US-Cuba relations or engage in a diatribe on American foreign policy. I will instead, in the spirit of magnanimity and world peace, bring the nations to the dining table with my take on a familiar recipe attributed to Castro's beloved island state.

Arroz a la Cubana was one of the first things I learned to cook, especially since it's one dish I really enjoyed eating as a child. I still love how the combination of all its elements - the fried saba, a spoonful of egg, the meat-raisin-potatoes-peas mixture - results, with a mouthful of steamed white rice, in one perfect bite. There is simplicity in its complexity, if you catch my drift.

Today I took the old recipe out and gave it a little spin. For all the ingredients involved, it's nevertheless an extremely affordable dish to prepare - I used to serve it up to the streetkids at the mission (anything with sauce to go with mounds of rice always stretches the budget). One of the little innovations I made under those constraints was replacing the sunny-side up egg with slices of hardboiled eggs instead (it's much prettier to look at too).

For this particular version, I used a pack of those frozen vegetable mixes that had corn niblets as well as peas and carrots. And, since I was going for a little twist, I diced up the saba bananas instead of the traditional lengthwise slices and deep fried them to lend a little more crunch into each lovely bite (plus it saves you the hassle of cutting up the banana with each spoonful). The result was scrumptious - the photo a lot less so. I'm learning, I'm learning!

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Arroz a la Cubana version 20.08, which I have lovingly christened...Fidel!

Recipe for Fidel here.

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