Moors and Christians

[Barry]

I've been to Cuba a couple of times - legally, once with a religious group licensed by the US Treasury Department, once with a cultural group so-licensed. Generally no longer possible to go there thanks to the Bush Admin generally no longer issuing licenses for authorized travel. Hmmm... Remember those Commie nations that used to restrict their citizens freedom of travel...

But I digress.

While there I developed a fondness for "Moors and Christians", pretty much the national dish of Cuba. Cheap, easy, exceptionally tasty, and good for you:

Basicly, you just make black beans, boiling them in water with a bit of cooking oil. No salt - it'll make the beans tough.

Make some rice.

Make up about a 50-50 mixture of beans and rice, first rinsing the beans off in boiling water so that none of the fluid the beans were cooked in gets into the rice (and thus the rice will remain white). Reserve the fluid the beans were cooked in for the next time you make whatever-was-in-the-fridge soup.

Designed as peasant food, not heart-healthy food, but seems to me that it'd be very good for your heart - no salt, no cholesterol. And beans and rice complement one another nutritionally, each of them providing amino acids that the other doesn't have.

And I just love the political incorrectness of the name: "Moors and Christians" (i.e. Blacks [beans] and Whites [rice], with religious overtones from the Spanish heritage of Cuba).

 

[hensylee]

frijole negres! where's the vinegar and garlic? I love that dish. Do you know about boyas? And plaintains (properly pronounced plantins)?

Mother was a Key West native. They lived right next to the Cuban bakery; mother was such a cutie they let her play in the flour. My grandmother spoke spanish and preferred it over english. That was when Key West was a wee town. It was much like Cuba.

 

[Nancy]

Just need some "Tangy Bang" hot sauce from Mr. Spice, no sodium and it's good.

http://www.mrspice.com/

 

[Barry]

hensylee, what's the deal with vinegar & garlic? How much of each would you recommend for, say, a cup of dry beans? And you put them in the water as you're bringing the beans to a boil?

And, nope, don't know about boyas. What's that about?

Good timing - went before I went under the knife, so I wasn't on Coumadin. So did learn a lot about Mojitos...



Nancy, thanks for the tip.

 

[hensylee]

vinegar, garlic and onions are added to the cooking beans for flavor/seasoning. I don't know how to make them so can't advise (we just buy the seasoned beans in the can and add a bit of vinegar and garlic). My aunt who used to cook them is gone now - one aunt is 98 and I will ask her. She would know the answer about how much. Boyas are a mix of mashed black eyed peas, onions and other seasonings, formed into balls and fried (maybe deep fried). If you are interested, I have a Miami cousin I can ask.

I once ate barbecued goat, cooked by a Cuban. It was one of the most delicious meats I have eaten. He seasoned it well, cooked it outside all day long. Guess they don't have much beef in Cuba but do have lots of goats.

 

[Barry]

Regarding beef in Cuba...
When I was there, the only cattle I saw were oxen, used as draft animals on the farms. Cuba's had an energy shortage and economic hard times in general ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, that's why you see so many oxen - gas is too expensive.

Can't remember whether there was beef on menus, 'cause I'm not a big fan of beef in the first place. Seems to me that the staples were fish, chicken, and pork.

Use garlic and onions when making US-style beans, had never heard of using vinegar before, will have to try it.

I'll have to do an internet search for boya recipes. Had never heard of them, but they sound really good.

I would have made a great latin-american peasant: I love beans.

 

[hensylee]

I sent an email yesterday to a cousin for the recipe for frijoles and for boyas. His mother was the official black bean cook, but he is the official boya maker. I will post them in here for you. I also asked him about mojitos

 

[Barry]

Making beans, v/s buying canned ones, is exceptionally simple and much cheaper: For any kind of dry beans, rinse them off in water, put them in the pot you're going to cook them in, add add a bunch of water and let them soak overnight. Adjust the water level so that there's about half an inch to an inch or so of water above the level of be beans and bring to a boil. Simmer until tender - somewhere between half an hour and an hour. Check every once in a while to see if you've got to add water to keep the beans covered with water.

Recipes for various sorts of beans then vary with additions: vegetable oil, ham-hocks are a traditional favorite with American-style beans, onions, garlic. And now, vinegar!

Mojitos are the national drink of Cuba. Say what you want about those commies - any nation that has a national drink can't be too bad! Anyway, it's basicly a mint julep, but made with rum instead of whiskey. Best recipe I ran across during extensive research in Cuba was:
a teaspoon of granulated sugar
some fresh mint leaves, too many is generally better than too few
smash the mint leaves into the sugar in the bottom of the glass (I use the handle of a wooden spoon)
put ice in the glass
pour in a jigger or so of white rum
fill the glass with Perier or other carbonated water (regular water works fine, though, and is more traditional - this is just a fancy touch)
add a dash of Angostura bitters (also just a fancy touch)
put a sprig of mint in as a garnish.

Looking forward to the frijoles & boyas recipes!

 

[hensylee]

Sent to me by another VR member who speaks the language. It's bollos - not boyas, tho pronounced boyas!

"The spelling is Bollos, pronounced as you spelled it "boyas". Here is a recipe just as I received it from an 86 year old 'conch' (locally born Key Wester of Cuban descent).

Black Eye Peas
Salt
Garlic
Hot Pepper

Soak the peas overnight, and in the morning slip the skins from the peas. Then grind the peas and the garlic with the finest knife of the food chopper. This must be done several times. Add the salt and hot pepper, and beat until it is the consistency of a cake batter. Then drop from a dessert spoon into deep hot fat. These are used as a vegetable with the meal, or as an appetizer with beer, or eaten just because they taste so good." Thanks to our VR member

I thought the official drink was Cuba Libre - sounds like maybe it's really called Mojitos.

When I was growing up, Miami people would fly over on a weekend to Cuba to partake of all the tourist stuff - night clubs, gambling and they ALWAYS brought back Cuban rum and cigars. All of it was cheap. Batista was president then - but along came Castro and we got a great shock, causing most of us to move out as Cubans moved into the Miami area. The first waves of Cubans were the upper class - governors, mayors, lawyers, doctors. They took menial jobs to avoid being on the U.S. government dole. But soon the rest of them arrived. A tidbit: Castro was educated right here in the U.S. of A.

 

[Barry]

Thanks for the recipe!

Brief rant on Cuban politics...

Had I been a Cuban in 1959 I would have joined Castro, Cienfuegos, and Guevera to overthrow Batista. Batista actually started out OK, but by 1959 he'd made Cuba the bordello and gambling hall of the Caribbean, a corrupt pig. But when it turned out that Castro was basicly just Batista in fatigues and had sold out the Revolution so that I'd ended up with just a communist pig in charge instead of a capitalist pig, I would have been among those who fled to the USA. And probably among those anti-Castro revolutionaries that the USA inadvertently ended up setting up for slaughter at the Bay of Pigs. Between the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the embargo that allows Castro to blame all of Cuba's economic problems on the USA and maintain a seige mentality in the country, the USA's hostility towards Cuba has been the best thing that ever happened to Castro.

 

[hensylee]

Batista definitely ran a country-wide bordello. I hear that Cuba now has much tourism but we can't go. I do believe it's time we all got over it. Those poor people over there appear to be so poor. They need meds, clothing, cars, etc. American Cubans need to see their relatives. If we lifted the embargo, Cuba would boom again but it would be a good boom this time, I think.

 

[Barry]

American policy towards Cuba won't change until after Castro dies.

Irony is that after Castro dies nothing's really going to change in Cuba. It's a very institutionalized military dictatorship run by the army. It won't become a free country after Castro dies any more than the Soviet Union became a free country after Stalin died.

Yes, there's a lot of tourism in Cuba. After the Soviet Union (and its guaranteed purchases of Cuban sugar) collapsed, the Cuban government very explicitly decided to try to build a tourist-based economy. It's been illegal for Americans to go to Cuba for tourism since around 1960, when Castro nationalized American property (the Coca Cola plant, among others) without compensation. But until the Bush Administration pretty much quit issuing licenses, you could go there with a bona fide cultural, religious, or humanitarian groups on trips licensed by the US Treasury Department.

Nearly all tourists in Cuba are Canadians or Europeans.