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Eusebio Leal Spengler, storiografo de L’Avana Havana / City Historian

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After having tasted an exquisite meal, dessert or drink, the after-dinner conversation is the next step. That’s the moment to diversify the pleasure sensation of eating and drinking. But, how about doing it with a habano?

Excerpts from the keynote remarks by Eusebio Leal Spengler, historian of the city of Havana, on November 16, 2011, during the grand opening of the Second Saborear lo Cubano Meeting, sponsored by Habaguanex S.A. travel company.

When we speak of Cuban, the doubt on what Cuban is always arises. And to answer that we must start from the basics of feeding. If we picked a certain country from the Americas, boasting a rewarding table teeming with original products, Mexico will be my first pick, a country whose cuisine is imponderable, even for us, when we manage to leave behind the taboo of certain things. For instance, we Cubans don’t eat –and even scornfully discard- the lobster’s head, which is the most precious body part in Europe, as long as it’s a fresh catch.
In China, especially the Cantonese people- couldn’t suspect that their perfect and sophisticated rice dishes could endure such extraordinary changes as they pass through the Americas. Fried rice, as it is consumed in Havana, the way we like it, is unknown in China. That’s our preference. And ours has nothing to do with the one eaten in Peru since it lacks a fundamental piece of seasoning they basically use in their meals and which is quite a stranger to us: coriander.
What’s Cuban cuisine? Some say: “We Cuban can’t do without rice”, and they’re right. Three days without rice, no matter where we might be, spell out a crisis for us. That rice we can’t live without is not Cuban. It came down to us on two possible routes. It’s said the viceroy and captain general of Santo Domingo, Nicolas de Ovando, commander of Lares, ordered rice to be planted in La Hispaniola, and that shows a way that rice probably took to get to the Americas. The second route was a rice-packed galleon out of Acapulco, disembarking on that seaport and sailing all the way from Mexico to Veracruz, Havana and Seville. That rice came the East, from China and the Philippines. Then, rice became a part of our diet. And indeed, We Cubans cannot eat properly without rice from the East, the same rice the Arabs grew in Spain, especially in the Valencian orchards.
The second element: black beans. It all comes down to the Cuban style when we hear: “Rice and black beans is the Cuban thing” So, black beans are also American. There’s one element missing, though. A cook gets kind of flummoxed when I simply ask for a delicious, basic and delicious dish: a good plate of white, long-grain rice and one big fired egg on top. Now the quality of the egg, whether it’s a Pitu de Caleya –as people from Asturia call “farmyard chicken”- or from the “countryside”, as we call it in Cuba, doesn’t make any difference as long as it’s uniform and tasty. That’s it.
So, it’s all about rice, black beans and eggs. There were no hens here. The eggs the aboriginals used to eat were those laid by migratory birds. But people from Castile brought in the hens. As the first three dozen horses were shipped in 500 years ago when the Castile-flagged cavalry led by Diego Velazquez landed on this island, hens came after or behind them. And then, the Jerez rooster brought about the cockfighting tradition, the smaller cocks that the Arabs had in time bred and taken good care of. The Castilian hen carried the egg we know today, and right behind it came the Guinea hen, whose motley eggs –they are said to be a tad harder- we crave so much. I’ve eaten them, and I like them as much as I like duck eggs. Yet the most morbid, the nicest of all, is the egg laid by the Castilian hen. None of the three things I’ve mentioned hail from Cuba.
And last but not least, there’s the Cuban-rooted tradition of sweetening sour food, something the Arabs also used to do with their exquisite treats. Yet the nitty-gritty element, the national meal, is still missing. Who’s to blame for this? Christopher Columbus. The Italians used to call it il maiale, but it boasts an array of names: chancho, cabeciagachao, pig, swine –the actual name— and pork. Oh, and something we don’t eat in Cuba because we’re so humane and the sole idea is way too spooky; something that resembles a crime: the small swine offspring, the one that hasn’t been weaned yet and weighs less than 20 pounds.
There’s no doubt in my mind that we need to study everything and there are some basic things about Cuba’s traditional food that can’t be found anywhere. For example, a minute, a well-breaded beefsteak. Something as simple as that is nothing but a good Cuban homemade meal. And we could go on and on for an entire assortment. The same happens with desserts. It’s simply inexcusable for a restaurant not to have good sweet potato paste on the menu because, just like codfish was down-to-earth food in the past, now only well-heeled people can afford it.
I wrap this up calling on all of us to delve deeper into universal cuisine and get to know what all people eat. Americans are round the corner; they come and go all the time and they are our customers. They’ll arrive in Cuba by the millions once the iniquitous embargo is lifted. They can’t have breakfast without cornflakes because that was already invented last century in North America by Mr. Kellogg, and from that moment on there’s not a single American who could have a decent breakfast without cornflakes. But they can’t have breakfast either without fried bacon strips. And the Italians can sit at any table unless their well-cooked pasta is served, not just any ignoble pasta; and served with our American tomato paste, which is a privilege of ours.
Who could think in Italy that tomato hails from America? Who could say in Switzerland, Germany or Belgium, that today make a living out of cacao, that cocoa belongs to us and that Ecuador is the world’s top cacao producer? And could say that in Cuba’s Baracoa, that just turned 500 years, the good and hospitable people there used to serve a ball of cocoa –nearly in a whisper- that has been prepared in their humble homes? It’s up to us now to find our own, to delve into our own. I’m evoking an art that must be preserved. Within the universal, let’s go to the particular; and within the particular, let’s figure out the Cuban. Let’s give ourselves that freedom too, the freedom of cuisine, the freedom to find our own way, but bearing in mind that the more Cuban it is, the more universal it is!