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(More customer reviews)Cuban cuisine mixes Caribbean and Latin flavors that turn into some truly memorable dishes. From personal experience, I also find it one of the more difficult cuisines to pull off honestly because one mistake can turn a dish into something generic or worse, unsalvageable. I had enjoyed the personable, fun-loving chef Alex Garcia on the Food Network for several years, as he co-hosted the Nuevo Latino cuisine segments on the dearly departed "Melting Pot" series. I even had the privilege of meeting him and tasting his food firsthand at his rather pricey midtown Manhattan restaurant, Babalu. That's why I had been anticipating his cookbook ever since he mentioned writing it over two years ago. Fortunately the result is a beautifully photographed and tantalizing cookbook with tasty recipes from his native Cuba.
I can vouch for the quality of several of the recipes since many of them were featured on his old series, and I have tried them successfully. The carne mechada (Cuban-style beef stew) is quite hearty and a crowd favorite. Also excellent are the arroz con gandules (pigeon pea rice) and the platános en tentación (roasted sweet plantains). His mojito recipe is fool-proof. Granted some of the native ingredients are hard to find, if not impossible, in some parts of the country, but reasonable substitutes are provided in the recipes. My one disappointment with the book is that even though Garcia writes the introduction, his personality is strangely missing from the book, which is a shame since that's what drew me initially to his cooking. Otherwise this is a fine starter for anybody who wants to give Cuban cooking a try. Along the same lines, I also recommend his former TV co-host Aaron Sanchez's versatile cookbook, "La Comida del Barrio", which focuses on Latin American cuisine as done here in the barrios stateside.
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In A Cuban Kitchen (Quintet Book)Immensely appealing and alluringly spicy, Cuban food has exploded in popularity. Recently, many Nuevo Latino chefs have chosen to interpret it in various "fusion" dishes, but the real home cooking of Cuba is delicious and rewarding on its own. Discover in a new cookbook which not only explores the riches of the cuisine but also reveals the unique beauty of Cuba itself. Influenced by the diversity of cultures that have settled on this Caribbean island over the centuries, including Spanish, French, African, Arabic, Chinese, and Portuguese, true Cuban cooking is exciting and varied. From such festive finger foods as croquetas, pastelitos, and bocaditos to traditional entrees like arroz con pollo, picadillo, and bistec emanizado, there's a wealth of savory dishes to explore. Learn how to create the traditional medianoche, or Cuban sandwich, brew a cup of bracing café cubano, and make the sumptuous dessert known as dulce de leche. In addition to the treasury of 100 traditional recipes, compiled by an accomplished Cuban-born chef, In A Cuban Kitchen provides a fascinating look at sugar cultivation, rum production, and other native resources essential to Cuban cuisine.
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