Eating in Havana--part one

Last week I was in Havana. Arrived with an appetite and left bent over. I love eating in Cuba, though by all accounts Cuban cuisine has not yet arrived. Travel books deride the state-owned restaurants that dominate, focusing instead on 12-seat privately-owned paladares that are tucked in improbable places throughout the city. Even then, reviews are generally luke warm, with the best loved paladares receiving more acclaim for their atmosphere than for their menu. The travel books are, for the most part, correct. Great food is hard to find in Havana, and certainly anything approaching haute cuisine is an extreme rarity and out of place anyway. So my approach to eating in Havana is to eat fresh and simple. Start with with is on the street. Ice cream sold in windows for 3 Cuban pesos (15 cents) is refreshing and always good. Last week I ate a mamey ice cream cone. Delicious. If you're lucky you will stumble upon a window selling guarapo--freshly squeezed sugar cane juice, ice cold. Look for a line because there is always one but it moves fast. One peso. That's a nickel for a 12 ounce glass. I usually drink two glasses a day. If you're lucky there will be a shooting range next store where you can take a shot at Cuban's least favorite US politician. Slices of pizza are ubiquitous on the street as are ham sandwiches. Old men and women hawk paper cones of peanuts--small, dark roasted, for about one Cuban peso but if you're a yanqui the price sometimes goes up a bit.

Eating in restaurants is uneven and I usually eat too much. The pollo asado is usually reliable. (The restauarant Aljibe is famous for their chicken and worth a visit. Very touristy though.) Fish (pescado) is usually snapper (pargo) and all too often overcooked and too buttery or too bland. Good shrimp, especially camarones aljillo, is common. I like it at Meson de la Flota, near the Plaza Vieja. I especially dig the lechon asado (roast pork) and it's at its best at Palenque, out near the Palacio de Convenciones.

My mistake this trip was eating too much on the front end and then going to Varadero for a day and staying in an all-inclusive resort. Common sense said stay away from the buffet, but we tried it anyway for the convenience. Bad, bad idea. My traveling companion S was in bed for 36 hours. I got by with only a few bruises. Stay away from all-inclusives. Unless you are a fan of cheap cruise ship food.

Favorites--part one

In no particular order:
Pickled bologna (Fischer's)
Fried clams
Steamed clams
White anchovy sandwich
lamb sandwich from Athens Restaurant (Manchester NH)
fried fish roe
pickled eggs
Hefeweizen
Schweinhachsen
avocado with salt pepper and olive oil and lemon

Today's lunch--black sea bass

Broiled North Carolina black sea bass, with homemade alt-tartar sauce. And salad. The key is fresh bass--in this case I bought two filets from Tom Robinson's Seafood, a local fishmonger who buys direct from NC commercial fishermen. Because they were so fresh, I kept it simple. Olive oil, salt, and pepper. Flash fried in an iron skillet for about 45 seconds on each side (skin side second) and then broiled for about 3 minutes per side. Make sure to scrape the cooked fish skin and other scrapings from the skiller when serving. They are the tastiest. The fish was delicious on its own. Just for kicks I made a little tartar sauce from what was in the fridge--safflower mayonnaise and capers. Add a bit of caper juice to a tablespoon of mayo and then add a few whole capers. Mash lightly. The alt-tartar was perfect.

Special note--black sea bass is within the South Atlantic snapper grouper complex. It is mostly caught by fishermen in NC who use fish pots to catch them. BSB is overfished and the government has recently imposed a strict quota and other harvest restrictions that are causing fishermen to panic. Fishermen are now leading the way, however, in designing an innovative , market-based "catch shares" program that will enhance their profits and help rebuild BSB populations at the same time. Wish them luck.

Mamey. Sacred fruit.

"Among the primitive Caribbean tribes, the mamey was considered a sacred fruit, which only the men were permitted to eat. This prohibition imposed on the weaker sex can only be attributed to masculine selfishness. It is so delicious that the male Caribbeans sought this way of keeping the entire crops of this fruit to themselves." From, Cuba: Ideal Vacation Land--Tourist Guide (1951).

I have eaten mamey in Cuba and fully believe that the above statement is not hyperbole. Mamey is so good, and so inaccessible in the US, that I jumped at the chance to pay 6 bucks at Whole Foods the other day for a small mamey from the Dominican Republic. (Mamey costs about 40 or 50 cents at an agromercado in Havana). I should have known that this sacred fruit would not be captured so easily at Whole Foods. The flesh of the mamey from the DR is yellowish orange versus deep ruby red from Cuba. And it is not nearly as sweet. If there is one single reason to lift the US embargo on Cuba, it is for free trade of mamey. Damn the Miami Cubans standing in the way.

Loco for loco pops

Yesterday and today. Part 1.
When I was 5 and 6 years old I favored orange and cherry popsicles (Sealtest I think) from Kiper's Store. Six cents. Kipers was on our walk from the driving range, where we'd pick up golf balls every Saturday morning (15 cents for a small basket, 25 for a big one), to home on Central Avenue in Leitchfield, KY. Orange was probably my favorite. Fast forward to today. Sealtest has been replaced by Locopops, which started in Durham and now has a second small store in Chapel Hill. They serve up homemade paletas (Mexican style popsicles) of all kinds--blueberry and honeydew, mojito, mango chile, etc. Smalls are $1.50 and big ones are $2.25 (I think). Last night I had a small cucumber chile. J had a blueberry cinnamon, which was supposed to be blueberry honeydew until the guys inadvertently put too much cinnamon in the batch. Very strong and spicy and very good. The cucumber chile was also remarkably good. Next time I am going to try their version of the fudgesicle. They are crazy good.

Poached eggs, pure and simple

Two to four eggs. Vinegar. Boiling water, deep, 2-3 inches. Eggs must be fresh, ideally with feathers still clinging to the shell. In my case, I bought them yesterday from Louise, who sells pound cake and two kinds of pie (sweet potato and pecan) at the local farmers market. If you get there earlier enough, she still has a few cartons of eggs fresh from her house just outside of town. They are always big and sometimes the shells are green, blue, brown or yellow. Add some vinegar to cold water in a pan. When the water is boiling, crack open an egg directly into the bubbles. Then put in up to two or three more eggs in the same pot. Cooks for maybe four minutes--you can tell how firm the yolks are by gently poking at them with a spoon--and then scoop out with a slotted spoon. Sea salt, pepper and tabasco. Rinse. Repeat.