Consumed

Burnt aparagus, no problem

Miscommunications. Misinformation. Misunderstandings. Missing the mark. Could it be that this is how culture evolves. If cuisine is a paradigm, as I believe it is, then the answer is yes. By getting a recipe wrong, by not understanding what it's all about, we create a new dish, a new chunk of culture.

Take the Iberian soups that crossed the Atlantic to become the bean stews we pour over white rice in the Spanish Caribbean. They are not the namesake soups one can consume in Spain. Here they acquired a different character, not always because a cook was innovating, but possibly because something got lost -- and something gained -- in translation.

Long ago in Cuba, my mother would make filet mignon out of a Cuban cookbook. The beef was completely overcooked but the wine and onion sauce was delicious, and, in truth, the overcooked beef was delicious too. Of course, when my mother makes filet now, she leaves it medium rare and skips the sauce. But she does serve it with a mix of mashed potato and malanga, which improves on regular mashed potatoes.

Italian restaurants in Miami are actually Italian-Latin American restaurants, run by Italian immigrants to Latin countries -- or their children -- who became immigrants again to the U.S. Some find fault in this cooking, and, not knowing Italian cuisine in depth, I don't feel qualified to judge. But others have told me they prefer this variant of Italian cuisine over what more "authentic" Italian restaurants serve. Not to mention that the latter are no longer Italian since they are no longer in Italy. There is always creolization.

Chili con carne, is it a bastardization of Mexican cooking or a wonderful Texan invention? (I won't even get into tofu burritos.) Or pizza. Or frankfurters outside Frankfurt. Hamburgers outside Hamburg. English muffins outside England.

A couple of decades ago a half-French girlfriend of mine escorted a French filmmaker around New York during that city's film festival. What did this Parisian most love about New York? Croissants stuffed with marmalade -- like jelly doughnuts. They didn't have such wonders back in France. Had he come to Miami, he could've sampled them stuffed with guava marmalade. Croissants cubanos.

As much of an authenticity nut as I am, I also have to acknowledge that if everything remained authentic nothing would change. Some times no change is good (isn't that the heart of conservative political thinking?). But change is inevitable. And it often happens -- in everything from evolution to cuisine -- by misfirings. By mistakes.

Wandering into 44, the restaurant at the boutique hotel The Royalton in Manhattan when it first opened, I noticed something like "blackened asparagus" (perhaps it just said "seared") on the menu. I thought, the kitchen burned the damn asparagus and just came up with a hip name to cover up their boo-oboo. "Those trendoids will eat anything,'' the chef might have said.

Perhaps. I ate it. And loved it.

Breakfast americano

The breakfast menu of a Cuban coffee-shop is practically "American." Orange juice. Eggs with bacon, sausage or ham. Grits or home fries. Toast. Coffee.

OK, the coffee is cafe con leche and the toast is Cuban bread -- and the orange  juice is always fresh-squeezed. But the rest is your basic American fare. Everyone loves an American breakfast and Cuban-Americans are no exception.

Grits came into the Cuban-American menu in the early days of exile, when it was Hispanized as harinita. Harina is flour or cereal meal. A Cuban staple, never seen in local restaurants, is called, simply, harina and is what Italians call polenta and some Americans call cornmeal mush. The white grits, being also a kind of cornmeal, got baptized "little harina." Cubans, including this blogger, took to it.

Southerners can be passionate about grits, which I understand but as much as I like grits I can't get that riled about it. It is basically a bed for other stuff. Like lots of butter. Or the runny yolk of a fried egg. Or the gravy in some Louisiana dishes. Or cheese -- yellow American cheese. Basically, grits taste like nothing, so I guess it's all about the texture.

At Casa Larios (7705 W Flagler St., Miami), I sit at the counter and order a breakfast that will help define the cubano-cracker identity one forges in Florida. Cafe con leche, Cuban toast, eggs over easy, grits -- and I ask they put cheese on it, a novelty to them but they comply. Other breakfast patrons are defining it in other ways, ordering eggs and bacon but perhaps also some croquetas and pastelitos, mostly for the kids. One gentleman sits next to me and orders a galletica preparada, which is the filling of a Cuban sandwich but between two saltine crackers instead of Cuban bread.

I dump my cheesy grits -- I also asked for butter -- next to the eggs, so they can run into the harinita. I dunk the strips of Cuban toast into the cafe con leche. I'm a happy cubano good old boy.

Still fishing

A business meal took me to Michael's Genuine Food and Drink in the Design District (140 NE 40th St., Miami, 305-573-5550, www.michaelsgenuine.com). Chef Michael Schwartz spearheads, locally, the movement that is currently sweeping gastronomy. The emphasis on locally grown, seasonally available and preferably organic foodstuffs. Mininum fuss.

And he had two local fish on the menu. Yellowjack, a tastier cousin of the coarser amberjack, and an orange colored swordfish he called pumpkin swordfish. Both were served simply cooked on what must have been a hot grill and done quickly enough so they were plump with their own juices.

Can anything be better?

Fishing in the '50s

Native Floridians or longtime residents of a certain age will remember the time when the fanciest item in a good restaurant's menu would be Pompano en papillote. Trachinotus carolinus or Florida pompano is a flat fish, with a very white, sweet flesh. It is, or was, the gastronomic prize of our waters and tables.

The papillote treatment refers to the fish being cooked in parchment paper, which would be open at the table with great fanfare -- those were the days of Steak Diane and other tableside entertainments -- as the aromatic steam would burst out of the wrappings in which the fish was baked. And not just fish steam. Pompano en papillote was stuffed with shellfish meat, traditionally shrimp and possibly lobster in a heavy cream sauce. Like all dishes popular in those pre-nouvelle days, it was totally over-the-top.

Since I moved back to Florida I've been looking for it. Chef Allen makes a lightened modern version, which I had once. Tasty, but I wanted the full late '50s Monty. It's likely that the last time I ate it was at the traditional take-the-girl-out-to-an-expensive-restaurant tradition after a high school formal dance -- I went to Plant High School in Tampa, a very social school where we had not just one but two formal dances a year, each with its dinner jacket, corsage for the date, and dinner afterward rites.

At the Key Biscayne docks, where I buy fish from the charter boat captains, I've been asking for it for the 12 years I've been living back in Florida, to no avail. They do bring in a big fish called African Pompano, which is far too thick and muscular: Florida pompano is small and feeds one person. Then this weekend, bingo! Big Al, a jovial gentleman in red suspenders old enough to reminisce with me about the good old Pompano en papillote days, had some. You can call him at 305-299-2940, but he told me he didn't know when and if he'd have it again. I dropped my dinner plans for lamb and went into high pompano gear.

The recipe hails from the famed Antoine's in New Orleans. A good online version from Emeril is available at http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_4942,00.html, but since I wanted to duplicate my post-prom experience I went to my own source, The Colombia Restaurant Spanish Cookbook, that being the restaurant of choice in the Tampa of the late 50s. It called for more butter and shrimp and crayfish (couldn't find any so i used crabmeat instead) than anything I've seen served in the past decades. I was practically resigned to baking it in foil when I found, to my surprise, parchment paper at the supermarket.

It was delicious, in a way that I had not experienced in decades. In a way, it reminded me of having made Beef Stroganoff about a year ago. Or having Steak Diane served at the table at a classic old restaurant near Palm Springs once. I don't eat like this every day or even every year; hell, I waited over half a century for my Pompano en papillote.

I don't know when I'll have it again, and, frankly, I'm not really into such elaborate cooking. But it was worth it. For the taste and for the memories of white dinner jackets and strapless dresses, big cars with roomy back seats, and teens pretending to be grownups out on the town.

Hunger of Memory and Memory of Hunger

I'm riffing on the title of essayist Richard Rodriguez's first book while thinking of Cuban-American playwright Eduardo Machado's recent one, Tastes Like Cuba. Herald Food columnist Maricel Presilla wrote about it Thursday and, to my surprise, it did not provoke a flurry of comments. I say surprise because Machado has some very politically incorrect attitudes for Cuban Miami, including dissing our Cuban food in favor of what he found in the island.

This has irked some exiles, even though they may not be the types who read and post online. Attitudes toward Cuba in Miami differ from what is found elsewhere, including New York, Machado's home and my own for many years. Some years ago, a New York Times piece provoked Miami's exile community by saying that tourists preferred Havana to Miami. Having traveled to Cuba as a New Yorker, albeit one born and raised in Cuba, I understand how the layers of history embedded in Havana's culture can please a traveler in ways that Miami's insistent modernity -- in all levels, from mindblowing tackiness to equally awesome artfulness -- can fail to comfort the soul.

But to exiles what stands out, besides the political system they despise, is the deprivation and the ruin. So when Machado finds sabor in Cuba, exiles can only remember steaks made out of grapefruit rind, long lines for a loaf of bread and the dreaded libreta, the rationing book.

Still, Miami's Cuban food has gone through changes, some for the worse. Like all immigrant cuisines, it has suffered the indignities of American industrial-food attitudes. Think Italian in the days of  heartburn tomato sauces, think chop suey, think tacos from fast-food chains. Indeed, Cuban food has not been around enough to sink that low, but anyone who remembers the first exile restaurants knows what was served was exactly what one was eating in the island when the eating was good. With time, only a few places kept standards up, many didn't, a lot closed.

Which brings me to my quest. In a couple of weeks, I'll be publishing, in the Food section of the Herald, profiles of classic Cuban restaurants. Which are your favorites? Your comments, please.

Of pigskins big and small

The comment on the chicharrones trumps my knowledge. In my childhood, we habaneros knew stores where you could pick chickens live and have them slaughtered and cleaned for you, but that's as far as our animal husbandry went -- today the whole issue of animal protein sources, as they say in the island, no es facil. What the reader says about the preparations from pig slaughter comes closer to what I heard as a child from my Spanish grandmother, who did grow up with country folkways.

And perhaps there are cultural differences between Oriente province, where the reader hails, and my native Havana, practically at the other end of the island. He first came across the small chicharrones in Miami, I did at Colombian eateries in Queens, NY., and Dominican ones in upper Manhattan.

Indeed, el Palacio de los Jugos, 5721 W Flagler St., has them, as well as the masas de puerco. They are constantly frying them all up and pouring them into a container along with garlic-studded pork fat.

I would also suggest any Colombian restaurant. They all carry the big chicharrones, which are a staple, particularly with paisas, the folk from the province of Antioquia, where Medellin is. The popular bandeja paisa, a big peasant dish, has chicharron. As does any picada, a plate of snacks that includes chicharron, morcilla and other goodies.

It may be that the big chicharrones are found in some Miami Cuban emporia because they were popular back home, but I always thought it was a response to the tastes of newer Latin American arrivals, like Colombians and others.

As for it being a snack with rum or beer, I say either one works fine. Salud!

Pigskin palace

The bodega where I bought my oxtail announces it's the house of the chicharron. Latinos eat two kinds. One, less popular among Cubans but available at many Cuban places, is a thick piece of fresh bacon fried until crisp. It's still pretty greasy, but chopped into bits and sprinkled with lime juice it's a great snack with a cold glass of beer.

The other chicharron is what in the U.S. we call pork rinds, and are favorites with many national cuisines, including the oldest, the Chinese. Little bits of pork skin and fat cooked until completely crisp. And, yes, also great with cold beer. It's the latter that one can buy at La Bodega Supermarket (11400 W Flagler St, 305-554-8774). And, indeed, it's the best I've had in town.

So if you care to pig out, this is your source. Not bad while watching pigskin games on the tube either.

The end of the affair

So how far does a guy have to drive to get some tail around here?

As far as Sweetewater, where at La Bodega Supermarket (11400 W Flagler St, 305-554-8774) I found some good looking tail. Oxtail, though it coming from oxen is not quite accurate. So-called oxtail comes from the steer, just like chuck roast or sirloin -- in Spain it traditionally came from fighting bulls.

Known in the U.S. as the base for oxtail soup, this boniest of cuts had a revival a couple of decades ago as trendy chefs discovered its unparalleled tastiness -- at just about the same time as they discovered fresh cod, an equally neglected cheap product. In some instances, oxtail was cooked, deboned and paired with the most expensive meat: foie gras.

Among Caribbean folk, oxtail has always been a staple. Haitians and Cubans make it, the latter in a dish called rabo encendido, literally tail on fire (I'm done with the innuendi, so come up with your own) because the dish was supposedly picante. Since Cuban dishes seldom are, picante meant only midly so -- one recipe calls for an extra dousing or black pepper, another for subsituting chile for the traditional Spanish bell pepper, though I think by chile it means something very mild like cachucha, we folk from Havana don't honor our fellow citizen, the chile habanero. Othe recipes simply ask for a dash of Tabasco.

But rabo encendido is basically oxtail cooked in a standard sofrito and braised until tender. I much prefer other national recipes. But if you want to make a rabo encendido, you might try this interesting recipe from tasteofcuba.com at http://www.tasteofcuba.com/oxtailstew.html, which includes bitter chocolate for a mole-like hint.

The rabo at La Bodega looked lean enough, unlike what my local supermarket has been carrying later. In any case, it's always a good idea to make oxtail a day ahead, refrigerate it and degrease the sauce before reheating.  Besides overnight sitting always helps with stews or bean dishes, giving the flavors a chance to, as they say, marry, or at least hook up.

What gives oxtail its wonderful flavor is what makes filet mignon tender: muscle tone. Filet has none, thus its tenderness -- and to many gastronomes, boring flavor. Since a steer is constantly moving its tail, the meat attached to its bones -- basically vertebrae -- are strong muscles, tough and full of flavor. Therefore, the need to cook for hours. The old saw about meat off the bone being best reaches its nadir with oxtail.

While still a good choice for soup, it would seem a pity to confine such a tasty cut to merely flavoring broth. In fact, since oxtail is cooked in plenty of liquid, the resulting "gravy" is delicious. Oxtail begs for mashed potatoes.

The Italian coda a la vaccinara is a classic and though I haven't made this particular recipe, it reads flavorful enough: http://italianfood.about.com/library/weekly/blbk20.htm.

I love oxtail and have tried countless recipes, far too many to list here. Even as I type this, I'm simmering the oxtail I bought at La Bodega according to the simplest Spanish recipe, from the new 1080 Recipes from Phaidon Press, which, banking on the success of its The Silver Spoon, the translation of an Italian classic, is figuring the popularity of Spanish cuisine will make this one a success as well. Look for an assessment of 1080 Recipes in my Consumed column in The Miami Herald soon -- I have to try a few more recipes first.

This Spanish rabo guisado is nothing but the pieces of oxtail simmered in water with carrots, onions studded with cloves, black peppercorns, white wine, bay leaf and salt. It should be simmered uncovered so the broth cooks down, and when the meat is falling off the bone, one should remove it, bone it and place in a warm plate. Remove the bay leaf and peppercorns. Puree the broth and veggies and pour over the meat. Serve with mashed potatoes. Easy.

When it's done I'll give the results. In the meantime, an advice I just gave a novice cook. Keep it simple. That's probably as useful as telling my kids not to do all the things I did as a kid. Young cooks fall for elaborate recipes they wind up blowing. As one gets older, one realizes how much frou-frou is just that. Leave the elaborate dishes to the clebrity chefs, or if you're a real curmudgeon, shun them altogether.

Recent postings to the story I wrote on Brazilian rodizio steakhouses carried a familiar theme of much "Anglo" lamenting about how we dreadful Latinos have ruined Miami: they boasted about cheap burger and rib joints from the old days and how much better they were than these overpriced Latin American eateries. Dudes -- and y'all tend to be dudes -- you're preaching to the choir. If you follow anything I write you know that dining at cheap burger and rib joints I'm as happy as a pig in... well, as a pig happily pigging out.

And to the reader who said an old fish place made a well known one I'd written about feel like a redneck joint, my only reply is... and? I grew up on the gulf coast, boy, and I fail to see what's wrong with redneck joints.

Pass the Wild Turkey and let them eat oxtail.

The Little Grocery Store In the Middle

Ay, mi Bodeguita! La Bodeguita del Medio, Cuba's famous watering hole, keeps taking a lot of abuse. In the Miami Vice film, Gong Li, whose Spanish is as awful as Charlton Heston's in Touch of Evil (except in Welles' pervese esthetics, it worked), takes Colin Farrell to "Lah Bow-day-git-ah dell May-dio" in Havana for mojitos and next thing you know we're in a spacious salsa club, not the cramped bar on Empedrado Street -- to her credit, or that of her genes and the film's dressmakers, she can fill out the derriere of a tight dress in the best Cuban style. Then there's the impossible-to-kill canard that Papa Hemigway was a regular. And now a Bodeguita is opening in Miami -- or re-opening or it's the fifth bodeguita to open or something like that -- with promises of the fine Cuban cuisine from the good old days.

La Bodeguita del Medio does not now nor has it ever served fine cuisine, Cuban or otherwise. Its food is not better, and usually worse, than the most vulgar Miami Cuban coffee-shop. Not to mention the fact that in the good old days fine cuisine restaurants in Cuba never ever served Cuban food any more than American ones served barbecue ribs. In both countries fine cuisine was French -- or that weird hybrid, "continental" -- or Spanish, never Cuban.

Never mind. Gullibility trumps history.

As I wrote for a Mexican magazine once, I would not exaggerate if I said I grew up at La Bodeguita del Medio. It used to be a bodega, as Cubans call it, the name used for neighborhood grocery stores in Miami and New York barrios. And because we lived around the corner in Old Havana, La Casa Martinez, as it was called -- La Bodeguita del Medio was just a nickname for a while -- was where we bought our viveres -- groceries. Later, when we moved to other parts of town, my parents still had our foodstuffs delivered from La Bodeguita, out of a sense of customer loyalty. And they claimed that Martinez, like a typical bodeguero, cheated us, shortchanging our orders. But it was nickel-and-dime cheating, so my parents never complained out of loyalty to Martinez.

And my parents were among the first eat-in customers when Martinez began serving food in the trastienda -- the backroom warehouse -- in makeshift tables. My mother claimed the food was awful; I liked it because it meant eating out.  It certainly was no fine cuisine. The picture of a big skillet full of picadillo cooking is fixed in my mind. Since picadillo is basically burger meat, I can't imagine it ever being fine, though it can be tasty.

When I went back to Cuba in 1985, I made an obligatory visit to our old bodega, which since the late 50s had stopped selling groceries and had become a restaurant/bar -- with a big Diner's Club sign, a symbol of its gentrification. The food in '85 was practically inedible. In later visits it was OK, no more, though I've had better in the most commonplace Calle Ocho joints.

At first the clientele was a mix of Cubans from the privileged and artsy classes and foreigners. Eventually, all I could find there was tourists, hustlers and whores. It depressed me.

Which is why I can't get too bummed about Farrell and Gong Li doing some -- not ungraceful but totally inauthentic -- Cuban dance steps in the imaginary Bodeguita. Or even the faux bodeguita that is coming to town.

In a way, it's a metaphor for my home country, which more and more becomes a Disneyfied Cubaworld. Ay, mi Bodeguita, like my Cuba -- at home and in exile -- you're becoming what I never would've believed. Bogus.

On the boulevard

Where do you go when the music stops? If anywhere around downtown area, Bin No. 18 on Biscayne and N.W. 18th St. A fine place after some lofty music at the Carnival Center, but in my case, after raunchy music -- Latino hip hop -- at Bayfront Park. With two young women in tow: my 13 year-old daughter and a classmate -- why else would I be going to such a concert, dawg?

Bin No. 18 is a lounge-style eatery -- sofas as well as tables -- and the feel is always a party. This time, an actual party, a birthday. We felt like the Wedding Crashers, except, of course, we paid for our food -- except the birthday cake.

Owner Alfredo Patino, a serious chef, is part of the Venezuelan diaspora that has brought new talent to the city in all fronts. After stints at local upscale restaurants, he's having fun with this relaxed venue, though not as relaxed as one he wanted to open but regulations prevented him, a trailer, like out of a trailer park, that would serve burgers and other pop food. Besides imaginative sandwiches and salads, he serves at least a couple of regular entrees a day, and this night I chose a boneless roast chicken with rosemary, black olives and artichokes. My daughter saw crab cakes in the menu and picked those, as she does every time she sees them. Her friend had a chickpea and serrano ham soup. Then we all had birthday cake, which was actually a kind of bouche de Noel, a few months early.

I was feeling guilty about keeping the young girls up late -- we went home after 1 a.m, though Bin No. 18 technically closes at 11 p.m, but, hey, it's Latin American and rules don't apply. After hours of standing up the stage rail jumping to homeboy Pitbull -- I also felt guilty about exposing them to the raunchy bilingual lyrics but they knew them all by heart -- and the great Cuban group Orishas, the girls, who never stop talking and laughing, were atypically quiet, about to fall asleep on their food plates. But re-fueled they were fine, and by the time I left they were practically jumping on a sofa, dancing to the music on the sound system -- they had to tell the old man that one song was Britney's newest.

Patino loves his work. When he talks about what he's cooking and how he does it, or about the new wines he's put on his list, he's so enthusiastic he practically jumps out of his skin. The energy is contagious and that's what makes his place fun. The music, the party, doesn't stop.

Temptation

Like all modern folk I don't want to be a gordo. Like all folk of a certain age I'm a lot more gordo that I'd like to be. And then try being a food writer. Shall I sample bulimia, that old Roman pastime. Ugh.

So I'm sitting at Islas Canarias, trying to report an article of classic Cuban restaurants and trying to avoid the gordo stigma at the same time. An impossible task, I conclude after realizing I have to skip any version of rice and beans, any version of rice as the base for stews and sauces, any fried taters or other tubers or tostones. Any boiled tubers, which, fortunately, I do not like. Dear Dr. Atkins, what the carajo have you done to me?*

* I use the word in the legally acceptable meaning that has allowed the two tapas bars called El Carajo to exist, even though I don't know what the carajo that has to do with an expletive. Carajo!

On ocassion I see or read about a low-cal or low-carb or diet Cuban cookbook. Sorry, folks, that does not work. Messing with the basics may allow you to live longer, but you will be living in gastronomic disarray.

So I pry around the menu looking for something real that won't pull the buttons of my guayabera. Ah, there it is! Baked yellowtail filet with vegetables. Baked fish is totally Cuban -- all I have to do is not eat the sliced potatoes under the fish. And vegetables, well, just because my dad, a good guajirito from Zulueta, Las Villas, shunned them until the doctor and my mother forced him to eat them -- for all the cheese sauce he asked on them, he might as well be eating mac-cheese -- it doesn't mean this Cuban has to be so recalcitrant.

I avoid the bread basket and am feeling pleased with myself when a waiter walks by with... a plate full of freshly fried ham croquetas. "These are not fattening either,'' he says, teasing me. I succumb. Get me thine croquetas, Satan!

I only eat one, but it's not tiny. It's also delicious. Enough calories and carbs to run my car on first gear all the way home. Forgive me, reader, for I have sinned.

By the time the fish comes, though competently cooked, it feels like penance.

Skate wing shuffle

The new Whole Foods Market on Red Road in Sunset appeared the place to be Saturday, as Miamians from all over crowded the high-end, mostly organic mega-store. Including the dining area, where folk munched on goodies from at least three salad bar/buffet tables -- one advertised "Latin" dishes -- and various other stands, including one where cooks dressed like sushi chefs sent flames soaring from woks.

Maybe it was publicity, but I heard about it word-of-mouth. "Oye,'' a friend said in a phone message, "you have to check it out. Es un espectaculo." Oh, yes, the "spectacle" was ocassion for me and another friend I had run into, a former boss who now runs Latin American business for an entertainment cable channel, to comment on how even the most "American" environments in Miami were actually Hispanic. We commented in Spanish, as we had non-Latin dishes for lunch.

Although the guy who tipped me had alerted me to a fantastic extra-virgin Spanish olive oil special, what really caught my eye was the skate at the seafood counter. That's the "wings" of the skate ray, which, as I understand it, is a cousin of the big manta rays one can see around coral reefs and the smaller sting rays that anyone raised in Florida knows how to avoid by doing the "sting ray shuffle" -- if wading in shallow water you step on something that moves, quickly shuffle your feet to allow the sting ray you stepped on to flee; otherwise it'll sting you.

Skate in black butter is a French bistro classic I was eager to try at home since this was the first time I'd found it for sale locally. I checked my Larousse Gastronomique, which I love because it's a big book with recipes of few words, and it was as easy as it was good. Since the skate wings already came ready to cook, I could skip all the preparations and just slip them into boiling water with salt and vinegar -- I could've made a court bouillon but the book said either, so I went for the easy, though I did throw a bit of parsley in the water so as not to be such a slouch. Simmer for 10 minutes. In the meantime, put butter in a pan and cook slowly until it turns brown (the "black" butter is a bit of a hyperbole). Add capers to the butter. Pour on top of the cooked skate. That's it. Wonderful.