Ampliar

Many can't think of that Cuban dish of black beans without the aromatic touch provided by a good cup of red wine in the nick of cooking time. Shrimps seasoned with red hot peppers –so much coveted in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo- take in some white wine and beer, let alone the tasty rice and chicken and the respectable chicken fricassee, so popular in the entire Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Dry sherry is the nitty-gritty pour when it comes to cooking roast pork or the Puerto Rican-style stuffed roast meat, as well as red wine is a must when doing rabbit and white wine ought to be close at hand when grilling pheasant. In Cuba, the so-called dry wine is widely used in seasoning stews and mixed rice.

White wine, red wine, sherry, beer, dry wine… you name it! There are other recipes, though, that perfectly take either silver-dry or golden rum during the cooking process. They are not so many, but I've always thought –and practice has been a true confirmation- that dry wine and other wines, as well as cognac, brandy and whiskey can really be replaced by rum in almost all red and white meat recipes; not to mention there are some desserts that will never pack a tasty wallop if they lack the magic touch only the gleeful spin-off of sugar cane can provide. Just to relate a handful of cases in point, rum is an ingredient in fruit salads and Puerto Rico's tembleque. And I don't want to talk about those delicious guava halves sprinkled with drunken cheese.

Let's see a couple of recipes.

Isla Bella Sauce

Mayonnaise and ketchup in a bowl. Pour some golden rum and orange juice until you churn out a homogeneous mixture. Add a pinch of salt and pepper. Sprinkle some thinly sliced parsley on top.

Red snapper a la rum

Skin and bone a red snapper of approximately 7kg. Season with peeled and crushed garlic, salt, bay leaf, thyme, chard, coriander, tomato, onion and lemon juice. Slice 900g of peeled potatoes and put them in a baking pan. Smear the fish in cooking oil –especially the head- and wrap it up in foil paper, equally oiled. Put the red snapper in the baking pan and add ¾ lt. of concentrated fish broth plus a whole bottle of silver-dry rum. Keep the baking pan in the oven at 300 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. When that time is up, take it out of the oven and remove the foil paper thoroughly. Sprinkle the red snapper once again with the seasoning sauce and the remaining broth and rum contained in the baking pan, only to put it back in the oven without the foil paper. Pour little cups of the remaining quarter of fish broth and the rum to let them soak well into the red snapper. Keep an eye on it every now and then to prevent it from getting overcooked. When it's ready, strain the seasoning and the sauce, pour them both on top of the red snapper and serve with lemon slices.