Cucina Cubano 101
1. Rice cake - not a cake, lovely rice, pressed into a dish and presented on the plate to show this is a high-class joint. At home its just rice.
2. Not a biscuit, more like a soft bap roll. Get some butter, or use to sop.
3. Black beans, flavored with cumin, bay leaf, and other goodies, eat with some diced onion and red vinegar on top, mix with rice.
4. 3 roast potatoes - hahahahaha. That's a ripe plantain, sliced and browned in butter in a hot pan. Ambrosia. Sweet like a sweet potato when ripe. Ripe, they're maduros; green, they're cut into chips, cooked, smashed flat, and refried into tostones. Often delivered with a garlic dipping sauce.
5. Pulled pork, bwahahahah!! That's beef, mate. Slow cooked (probably in a pressure cooker) with tasty spices, onions, etc. until it is the the consistency of old clothes in the wash, hence "ropa vieja". The ultimate Cuban comfort food.
Learn to love this stuff from the kitchen of Rosa Arias, my mate Jimmy's mum, back in the 60's. They were in the first wave to get out when Fidel took over. Senor Arias was a lawyer in Cuba, and drove a truck for a living in the USA until he could get his credentials back together.
