Cuba is a luxurious island famous for its wines, rum and tobacco. Here is a very tasty and varied cuisine that will be remembered by everyone and will not leave indifferent even the most spoiled tourist. The article presents the main dishes of Cuban cuisine and describes the recipe for making such an excellent appetizer as a Cuban sandwich.
Features of exotic cuisine
The main foodstuffs on this Liberty Island are meat, grains and seafood. Delicious steaks are prepared from beef, pork and lamb, served with special sauces. The secrets of preparing traditional sauces are known only to the Cubans themselves, who admit that they borrowed some dishes from the Spaniards and transformed them a little, adding more spices, hot spices and meat.
Restaurants delight tourists with a variety of delicious gastronomic delights, they offer spicy dishes of not only national, but also European cuisine. Here are the most famous dishes:
- Paella. Although this dish comes from Spain, the local version is not inferior to anything: on the contrary, it is here that a wide variety of recipes with the addition of ham, shellfish and other seafood are presented.
- Piccadillo a la Abanera is minced beef stewed in the famous Creole sauce. It is usually served on tortillas along with a side dish (rice or other cereals).
- Tamale - pork roll with aromatic spices, corn flour is taken for the dough, which makes the dish crumbly.
- Le hon asado is a fried pork, and fry it almost entirely until a thick crust is formed. Served with a special moss sauce (it can be red or green depending on the ingredients), this marinade is made from olive oil, garlic, tomato or parsley.
Surely everyone remembers that in the Soviet years, Cubans came to the USSR: who to study, and who to look at the city with bright socialist ideas. Cuban students had a special dish that they called "impingao." The Cuban sandwich was indeed one of the favorite snacks with which they treated all classmates. They are still popular throughout Cuba, they are prepared according to the traditional recipe, which we will now tell you.
Cuban sandwich: ingredients
A sandwich is an appetizer that came to us from America. The main difference between sandwiches and our sandwiches is that they consist of several layers of bread and filler, while we prepare sandwiches from one slice of bread.
A Cuban sandwich (whose photo you see above) is prepared from pieces of pork. This is a fairly large snack filled with meat and other ingredients. To prepare a real Cuban sandwich, we need the following set of products: toast bread (6 slices), pork meat (it is better to take the fatty part) - 450 g, white wine - 2 tbsp. L., green salad (large leaves will look better), garlic - 5 cloves, lemon juice, butter and vegetable oils, spices (oregano, salt, sugar, mustard, paprika, pepper).
It is necessary to clean the cooking area from unnecessary things, we also need an oven for baking snacks and a grill.
Cuban sandwich: step by step recipe
So, after preparing the necessary ingredients, you can proceed to the process itself. Be prepared for the fact that the Cuban sandwich is not prepared as fast as other snacks.
Step 1. Mix salt, sugar and mustard, rub the meat with the finished mixture and put in the refrigerator for 4 hours. Thanks to this marinade, pork is soft and juicy.
Step 2. After time, we take out the pork and wipe the meat with a paper towel, then coat it with the next mixture of rast. oils, paprika, oregano, mustard and pepper.
Step 3. Pour white wine and lemon juice into the baking dish, pour the pieces of garlic on top. Now you can put the meat. Bake for an hour and a half at a temperature not exceeding 170 °.
Step 4. Finished meat must be shredded into thin pieces. Put a lettuce leaf on a slice of bread, put another slice on top, and meat on it. Cover again with a slice of toast bread and grill the sandwich (you can also fry in a pan, melting a little butter in it beforehand).
Little trick
Like other types of sandwiches, Cuban can also be combined with various fillers. For a change, we recommend adding a little pickled cucumbers to the meat, and to make the appetizer juicy, you can use the frying of bell pepper and onion. The meat supplement is also ideal in the form of cherry tomatoes, cut in half.