Typical Cuban Food
Typical Cuban food, amazing for the variety of dishes, the good seasoning and the amounts served, is usually saved for Christmas' Eve, New Year's Eve or big family occasions.
It all begins drinking iced beer, Bucanero or Cristal, with crisp pork rinds. Women are in charge of the black beans, yucca with a garnish of chopped parsley and onion with lemon; plenty of white rice, malanga or corn fritters, fried banana patty and tomato salad with lettuce. Men, gathered at the courtyard, see to the roast pig, which is placed on a spike above the charcoal fire, covered with leaves from a guava tree and sprinkled with sour orange juice from time to time. This can take several hours but, meanwhile, they keep on talking and drinking beers. Everything is served in dishes, except the pork, which is placed on a tray at the centre of the table. Cubans like to eat everything together, usually on the same plate. During dinner, beer and cold water are the beverages. Typical desserts are guava marmalade with yellow cheese slices and yucca crullers in anise-flavoured syrup. Having eaten to the point of contentment, they drink rum and dance till daybreak.
Typical Cuban dishes are: Black beans and rice, fried sliced banana, garlic marinades, rice dishes, boiled Yucca plant. Olive oil and garlic marinades are using used as sauces on most dishes. Meat is usually prepared roasted or in a marinade "creola" style.
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A Cuban celebration in a family atmosphere begins with iced beer, accompanied with crisp pork rinds extracted from the fat. The women are in charge of preparing the black “asleep” beans, the yucca with “mojo”(garnish chopped parsley and onion with lemon), malanga or corn fritters, abundant white rice, chatinos bananas (fried banana patty), tomatoes salad adorned with lettuces. Men, grouped at the courtyard, are roasting in spike a pig leg, or an entire pig that is covered with leaves from guava tree and from time to time it’s sprinkled with sour orange juice. This can last hours, but meanwhile, they keep on talking and taking beer. During the meal, beer and cold water are the beverage. The typical desserts are guava jam with yellow cheese slices, or yucca crullers in anise-flavoured syrup.
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From its origins, the Cuban cuisine has been the result of the confluence of the same factors that allowed the formation of the nationality in the XIX century: The melt of the Spanish, aboriginal, African customs and the later influence of the Asian immigration and from the Yucatan peninsula. The Spanish introduced in Cuba products as rice, lemons, oranges, the bovine and equine livestock; the African slaves contributed with the yam (Tuber similar to the potato) and the quimbombó, and both of them mixed in their diet the typical food of the Cuban natives as yucca and corn
Already on the XIX century the typical cuisine begins to differ from the Spaniard, up to the point to acquire its proper characteristics. Back them arise dishes that later would integrate the typical Cuban diet like the rice with chicken, the rice with red beans (also so-called " Moors and Christians " o " moor rice "), the oriental congrí (rice with black beans).
The Cuban national dish is a so-called Ajiaco Criollo, a set of vegetables and meats of diverse types cooked together with a large diversity of ingredients. In the Ajiaco cannot be missing Yucca (cassava), Malanga (sweet potato), boniato (yam), potato, green (unripe) and ripe bananas, corn and pieces of dry and salty meats. But in a celebration or in an important date it can not be missed on the table the roast or fried pork, tostones (slices of green banana squashed and fried), crisp pork rind or the ground meat (this plate is very well-known as Habanera ground beef).
