Cuban food

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July 22, 2011 | 2:55 PM | By

‘What makes a restaurant authentic?’

Photo by cattoo/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Should it matter if Cajun food is prepared by a chef from Iran, sushi by a chef from Mexico?

In a land where your sushi chef might be from Mexico, they guy who makes your pizza might be from El Salvador, and the owner of your favorite Cajun joint might be from Iran, how relevant is “authenticity” to a restaurant if the food is good? And what constitutes authenticity, anyway?

Elahe Izadi of WAMU’s DCentric blog in Washington, D.C. poses these questions in an interesting post today, talking to the chefs and patrons of eateries operated by people whose ethnicity is different from that of the cuisine served.

Among those she interviews is Bardia Ferdowski, an Iranian immigrant who moved to Louisiana, working in Cajun restaurants and eventually opening his own Cajun kitchen in D.C. She also talks to Jose De Velasquez, an immigrant from El Salvador whose pizzeria, the Italian-sounding Moroni & Brothers, also serves Salvadoran and Mexican food. From the piece:

A wood-fire oven blazes in the back of the restaurant. Above it, a picture of De Velasquez making a pizza hangs on the wall, next to an ornament with “El Salvador” emblazoned on the front.

“The most important thing is to know how to combine the ingredients, and the dough recipe,” Jose says in Spanish. “But we’re Salvadoran and we wanted something traditional. This is a good combination.”

At one table, a couple eats pupusas. At another, Jeff Lindeblad and his two daughters eat their usual meal: quesadillas and pizza. The menu “didn’t seem odd at all” on his first visit, Lindeblad says.

“Is it important to have someone from Italy make the pizza? No,” Lindeblad says. “And the pizza here is fantastic.”

I’ll admit that I’ve been an authenticity snob in the past, especially in the post-“Buena Vista Social Club” era of a decade ago, when the humble, filling Cuban food of my youth – not to mention mojitos – became trendy and bad interpretations were popping up like weeds.

Similarly, I’ve turned up my nose at some American-style Mexican food, but I’ve since been schooled. In a recent Multi-American Q&A, the OC Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano presented a good argument in defense of Tex-Mex, Cal-Mex, even something he’s dubbed Bro-Mex as authentic in their own right.

In her post, Elahe asks: ”How important is authenticity in a restaurant? How do you judge a restaurant’s authenticity?” Feel free to share your thoughts below.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, Cajun food, Cuban food, DCentric, Italian food, Mexican food, Salvadoran food, WAMU
July 1, 2011 | 4:29 PM | By

The new American barbecue: Carne asada, galbi, lula kebab y más

A helping of carne asada. Photo by Sifu Renka/Flickr (Creative Commons)

In Los Angeles, the aroma that wafts from backyard barbecues on the Fourth of July varies slightly depending on the neighborhood one finds oneself in.

In large swaths of the city, from the Eastside to South L.A. to the southeastern suburbs, the smell of cumin and garlic from Mexican carne asada beckons. Drive north toward Glendale and you’ll catch a whiff of the distinctive smell of grilled lamb from Armenian kebab. Head east into Downey and you’ll find more garlic in the air, rising from the Cuban mojo smothered on pork chops.

Smelling one’s way through neighborhoods is one thing, but eating the offerings is better. If you haven’t been invited to one of these backyard feasts, the solution is simple – make one yourself.

A few recipes:

Carne Asada

There are few better backyard meals than tacos made with a good carne asada, grilled flank or skirt steak that has been marinated in a blend of spices that includes chiles, garlic, cumin, lime and orange juice. This comprehensive recipe lists not only the marinate and prep details for this grilled Mexican staple, but the necessary fixings to accompany it.

Galbi

Also referred as kalbi, these are Korean braised short ribs, usually beef. That Korean barbecue madness that has gripped the nation? It’s because Korean barbecue is really, really good. Like the best grilling marinades, the one for galbi employs garlic, along with with soy sauce, sugar and other ingredients. Skip the urge to buy those frozen Korean barbecue “street” tacos and grill some galbi at home instead.

Chuletas de puerco

My own Fourth of July barbecue meal will likely consist of these Cuban-style pork chops, drenched in the garlicky marinade referred to as mojo crillo and lovingly tended to on the grill by my father. Chuletas are your basic supermarket pork chop – what makes them wonderful is the mojo. It’s best to make your own, as my dad does, but novices can get a taste with the bottled mojo sold in many Latin American grocery stores.

Lula kebab

While commercial outdoor grilling is banned in the city of Glendale, fortunately backyard grilling is not, allowing the city’s Armenian American residents to grill fragrant delicacies like lula kebab. Typically made with seasoned ground lamb, lula kebab is shaped around a skewer then thrown on the grill. In some recipes, an egg helps hold the shape. It goes nicely with a traditional pilaf.

Picanha

This Brazilian grilled favorite is served off a large skewer in churrascarias, but it’s relatively easy to grill at home. It’s typically made with a large cut of tri-tip or rump steak, rubbed with garlic and often served with a tomato-based relish. There are some helpful links on how to find the right cuts of meat, along with this entertaining how-to video.

Not that there’s anything wrong with burgers and chicken. Whatever your holiday meal is, enjoy.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Armenian food, Brazilian food, Cuban food, Fourth of July barbecues, Korean food, Mexican food
May 27, 2011 | 3:49 PM | By

Five ethnic food tastes worth acquiring: The meat edition

Photo by Manogamo/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A bowl of raw kitfo, at right, with spongy injera bread

Last week, Multi-American delved once more into that culinary landscape where some diners fear to tread, the territory of the unsung ethnic delicacy.

These are the dishes that don’t necessarily sound good, look good or or even smell good, but are worth trying because they are unexpectedly delicious.

Our first series in March covered a range of foods, from drinks like the Vietnamese avocado milkshake to main dishes like arroz con calamares en su tinta, a particularly unattractive squid dish served in several Latin American countries.

The series last week focused on meat dishes, cooked, raw and canned. True to form, none sound like anything one would rush out to try, but don’t be put off. For any carnivores who might have missed these treats, here they are in a convenient list. Dig in.

  • The clever and delicious Spam musubi, which looks like a giant piece of sushi and is a popular snack in Hawaii. In a typical preparation, the sliced Spam is grilled and simmered in a mix of soy sauce, sugar, and rice wine. It is then placed atop a giant piece of Spam-sized molded sushi rice (there is actually a gadget called a Spam musubi rice press) and, in the simplest version, the entire thing is wrapped with a piece of nori, the dried seaweed wrapper common to sushi. Sounds odd, looks odd, tastes great.
  • The very red, very raw chee kufta, popular in Armenian and Turkish cuisines (and known as kibbeh nayyeh in Lebanon). Eaten as a cold appetizer, it consists of ground beef or lamb mixed with fine wheat bulghur and seasonings, which in the typical Armenian preparation consist of red and black pepper, water and salt. It is then garnished with scallions, parsley and a generous amount of olive oil. The trick to a great chee kufta is very lean meat, preferably ground by the cook. One reader described it as “a special luscious dish.” Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Armenian food, Cabrit, Chee kufta, Cuban food, Dominican food, Ethiopian food, Haitian food, Hawaiian food, Kitfo, Rabo encendido, Spam musubi
May 24, 2011 | 6:48 PM | By

Spam rocks? Much, much love for Spam musubi

Spam musubi to go, October 2006. Photo by klyphord/Flickr (Creative Commons)

One of a series of posts last week that explored unsung ethnic delicacies highlighted Spam musubi, a popular snack made with Spam and sushi rice that is popular in Hawaii.

The series focused on those dishes or items that may not look or sound good, but are in fact delicious. I knew that Spam musubi was well-loved on the islands, and at least by one person in Washington, D.C., that being our Hawaii-raised president. But judging by the flood of comments that came in to KPCC’s Facebook page, there is a great deal of Spam musubi love out there.

“This is one of my favorite foods!” Joanne Kakuda wrote.

“Hot dogs are worse than spam so I don’t understand the prejudice against it,” Tracy Munar-Ramos wrote. “Spam rocks!”

Okay, not entirely sure about that. Vanessa Lee put it in perspective:

Love spam musubi, but can’t eat the pink canned stuff any other way.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Armenian food, Cuban food, Dominican food, Ethiopian food, Ethnic food tastes worth acquiring, Haitian food, Hawaiian food, Spam musubi
May 19, 2011 | 5:41 PM | By

More ethnic food tastes worth acquiring: Rabo encendido

This tail is on fire? Rabo encendido, May 2011. Photo by Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC

We’re on the second-to-last day of a week of posts celebrating unsung ethnic delicacies, this time those raw, cooked or canned meat dishes that don’t look or sound great, but taste delicious.

Today’s offering, rabo encendido, neither looks nor sounds good. Its name, which translates to “tail on fire,” ranked third on a recent list of seven oddly named foods in Dominican cuisine.

But what sounds like a painful bovine affliction is in fact a tasty stew of beef oxtail in a mildly spicy tomato sauce. It’s popular throughout the Caribbean, found in Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican cooking. As with other oxtail preparations around the globe, it’s a dish born of necessity, the product of creative cooks who couldn’t afford to waste a scrap of meat and made it taste good.

All that said, “tail on fire” is not the most appetizing thing to look at. The name is bad enough. There is the anatomical location of the tail to consider, not ideal. Then there are the knobby, irregularly shaped bones, which you must dig into to find the meat in the nooks and crannies.

Once you find it, though, it’s brilliant. The meat on a good rabo encendido is moist, has a melt-in-your-mouth consistency and is well worth digging for. One can separate the true carnivores from the herbivorous wimps over a plate of rabo encendido. The carnivores will pick it clean; occasional meat eaters like me will get chided for leaving a meal’s worth of meat on the bone.

One caveat: Rabo encendido is really not that “on fire.” The Caribbean palate has a relatively low heat tolerance, so those accustomed to the spice level of Mexican food may want to doctor it with a little hot sauce. But the mild tomato-based sauce is good in its own right, seasoned with savory spices and the standard cooking base with onions, peppers and garlic known as sofrito.

It takes some work to make, so it’s best tried at a restaurant. In Southern California, it’s relatively standard fare at most traditional Cuban eateries. But here are recipes for a Cuban-style preparation and a Dominican-style one if anyone wants to try this at home.

Have an unattractive or unappetizing-sounding dish to share that’s worth trying? Please post a suggestion.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Cuban food, Dominican food, Ethnic food tastes to acquire, Puerto Rican food, Rabo encendido
March 21, 2011 | 6:36 PM | By

Ethnic food tastes worth acquiring: Arroz con calamares en su tinta

Photo by Boca Dorada/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Mmm, inky. Arroz con calamares, February 2007.

Today marks the launch of a week’s worth of posts about food. Not just any food, but those dishes in every ethnic cuisine that may not seem appetizing to those who didn’t grow up with them, or require more than one taste to fall in love with, but are delicious to those in the know.

I’ll be compiling a list throughout the week of tastes worth acquiring, and suggestions are welcome. The idea is to spread the culinary wealth. Those who grew up drinking Vietnamese-style avocado milkshakes may never have tried Oaxacan-style huitlacoche empanadas, and vice versa. Big town, lots of food to try.

Most of my own food tastes are acquired, courtesy of Los Angeles, but I’ll kick off the list with a dish from my upbringing: Arroz con calamares en su tinta, or rice with squid in its own ink. This is not to be confused with the more mildly flavored squid-ink risotto or black pasta that foodies order at upscale Italian eateries order when feeling adventurous. This is the brawny, briny, fishy peasant version from the Caribbean, best eaten locally in one of L.A.’s traditional Cuban joints.

The dish originated in Spain, was imported to the colonies and is still eaten in several Latin American countries. (It’s also known as arroz negro, or black rice, and black paella.) I’m accustomed to the Cuban version, improved on with sofrito, the standard cooking base of onions, garlic and bell peppers. It’s pretty straightforward: Squid in its own blue-black ink (likely canned, since milking ink from a fresh squid is an icky task) cooked with rice and flavored with sofrito. The end product has a slightly purplish-gray cast, including the squishy bits of squid scattered through the rice.

It looks, frankly, disgusting. The first bite tastes fishy, which doesn’t help. But the second tastes better, and the third is seriously addicting. It’s a riot of salt and brine, and it grows on you.

If you know of a dish along the same lines that you’d like to suggest – and where around town to find it – please post a comment below. Photos are welcome, too.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Arroz con calamares, Avocado milkshakes, Cuban food, Huitlacoche, Oaxacan food, Vietnamese food
November 23, 2010 | 6:30 PM | By

Three turkeys, three cultures

Photo by cobalt123/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Okay, so there are four turkeys here and not three, whatever. November 2005

It’s two days to Thanksgiving and a turkey dinner prepared with…mole? Fish sauce? Heck yeah.

This morning I came across two posts on two different ways to prepare turkey, and they have nothing to do with basting it with butter or Mrs. Cubbison’s.

Tasting Table Los Angeles featured a post on the secrets of Oaxacan-style turkey cooking as practiced by Guelaguetza restaurant chef Maria de Jesus Monterrubio, one of which involves a bird seasoned with chile paste, spices and chocolate and served with rich, chocolatey Oaxacan mole. KCRW’s Good Food blog had a recipe for Vietnamese-style turkey seasoned with coriander, ginger and fish sauce.

Mmmm. Of course, Thanksgiving turkey made the immigrant way is about the only way I’ve ever eaten it at home. In my family, the bird is soaked overnight in mojo criollo, the garlicky marinade made with sour oranges that Cubans typically reserve for roasted pork. My parents must have decided that if they were going to assimilate and eat turkey instead of pork, they were going to do it on their terms.

The result has always been delicious. The same goes, I’m sure, for the tasty-sounding birds mentioned above. Enjoy the holiday preparations, folks.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Cuban food, Guelaguetza, Mexican food, Vietnamese food
November 10, 2010 | 7:08 PM | By

Two Cuban bakeries = more papas rellenas for Downey. What’s not to love?

Photo by Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC

The grand-opening line at at the new Porto's in Downey, November 9, 2010

In most of L.A. county’s Latino suburbs, the news of a bakery opening isn’t usually anything to get excited about, let alone anything that makes the gossip circuit. Not the case in Downey, though, home to a cafecito-drinking, pastelito-loving community of Cuban immigrants and their descendants, my family included.

And, until now, a one-Cuban-bakery town.

For those not familiar with Cuban eating habits, here is why bakeries matter: We love the starch. Doughy bread embedded with chicharrones, flaky ground-meat pastelitos and guava-and-cream cheese pastries (the latter once nicknamed “Marielitos” after participants of the 1980 Mariel boatlift, for reasons I can’t explain), deep-fried starchy things like papas rellenas (mashed potato balls stuffed with meat, which taste far better than they sound). Bakeries also sell coffee, which we drink lots of. Bakeries are sacred.

For the past decade, Downey’s Cuban-Americans have flocked to the Tropicana Bakery, a homey coffeehouse-style place decorated with nostalgic old-Havana photos that serves as an impromtu gathering place for friends who bump into each other when buying bread or pastries. Retirees sip coffee and gossip; their adult children drop by for a bakery box of nostalgia to go. But for more than a year now, I’ve heard the chisme at family gatherings: “Porto’s viene a Downey!” (Porto’s is coming to Downey!)

Yes, Porto’s, the Glendale-based undisputed heavyweight of the L.A. Cuban bakery scene. And yesterday it happened: the grand opening of Porto’s spiffy new Downey location, its third, tucked inside an impressive modernist gem of a building that looks absolutely nothing like old Havana.

Could two big Cuban bakeries survive in this town? What would this mean, for Downey, for its beloved Tropicana, for tradition, for all of us?

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, Cuban food, Downey, Los Angeles County, Porto's