The Cuban Table by Anna Sofia Pelaez

Food Writer travels through Cuba to gain insight on the nation’s unique foods. Not content to interview just the chefs, she also seeks ideas from baristas, food cart vendors, grocers, and regular home cooks in various regions of the country. Depending on where you are, the local cooking will involve fish, beef, poultry, or ingenious dishes with no meat at all. If you’re a vegan you will definitely love this book, because in a country where meat can be costly, the cooking is obviously going to develop without it.

What could be better than serving your guests a pot of “potaje de garbanzos” on a winter night? It’s a stew made of sausages, beans, chick peas, tomatoes, and wine, and you can make it with minimal salt. The Cuban Table is full of spicy dishes that can be made with fresh meats, vegetables, and fruits, and they don’t require huge effort or prep time. Take for instance the Calabaza con mojo, a dish made from steamed pumpkin and spicy oil with onions. I don’t know if American pumpkins can be steamed, you might have to use the smaller green ones, but this dish is easy to make and can be served as an appetizer. You simply steam the pumpkins, cook the onions in oil with garlic and pepper, then pour the onions and oil over them and serve.

Cuban cuisine, according to this book, consists of small-scale dishes and large communal ones. The small items, like fritters or fried fish, are the kind of thing you’d get from food carts or pre-fix lunch counters. The larger dishes, like the stews and meats, take longer to prepare and are probably served at night, when everybody’s home. This is true throughout the world, because lunch is eaten on the run in most countries (except maybe France) and when you’re pressed for time, you need to eat without a knife or fork. But for the bigger dishes of meat and vegetables, you can take your time, throw in more ingredients, and slow cook it.

As with any cookbook, the food has to look appetizing, and the dishes are lavishly photographed by expert food photographers Ellen Silverman. It captures not only the taste of Cuba, but the sight, sound and smell.