This is the King of Bean Soups and about as Cuban as you can get. I can't imagine any Cuban get together that doesn't involve food, and specifically Black Beans and rice as a featured complement to the main course. Many people think of beans as healthy, sensible, inexpensive, something you make to stretch your food budget. This bean soup is all that, but it is also delicious and an exotic experience for your taste buds. Picture yourself on a veranda, feeling the tropical breeze, eating these wonderful beans!

There are a many versions of this recipe, none as good as my mother's. Mamina made this for every family gathering, now it's my turn to continue this delicious tradition.

FRIJOLES NEGROS-Black Bean Soup


1 lb bag (2 cups) dry black beans (you can use canned beans and add the sofrito, but it won’t be as good)

3-4 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt



Sofrito:

3-4 Tablespoons of olive oil

1 large green bell pepper

1 large onion

4-5 garlic cloves


1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon cumin

2 teaspoon sugar

1 Tablespoon of vinegar
1 Tablespoon of olive oil



Sort through the beans to take out any debris. Rinse and then cover them with water and soak overnight. Cook in soaking water, do not change it, so they don't loose any of their beautiful inky blackness. Add more water if needed, to about 2 inches above the beans, add the bay leaves.

If using a pressure cooker, cook 20- 25 minutes after pressure is reached. Otherwise use a heavy pan, bring the beans to a boil, then lower the temperature to low and cover them. Cook them for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until the beans are soft; if they dry out you can add more water. I like to set them at the back of the stove and forget about them. Don't worry, the aroma will remind you that they are cooking.

You can also cook them on high in a slow cooker for 7-8 hours. This actually works quite well. Then proceed with sofrito, etc.

Add the tablespoon of salt after they are soft, if you add it before cooking, the beans will be tough.

SOFRITO

While the beans are cooking, chop up pepper and onion. My mother stressed that the secret to her marvelous black beans was lots of green pepper. Sauté in olive oil, be generous with the oil for this one. Cook until the onions are translucent. Mash or mince the garlic and add to the sofrito, continue cooking for another minute or so.

When the beans are soft add the Sofrito to them, also the oregano, cumin and sugar. Stir and cook on low, covered, for about 20 more minutes. It will thicken a bit and all the flavors will blend. Taste it and add more salt if needed. Some people like to take out a cup of the beans, mash them and add them back to the soup to thicken it.

The last 2 ingredients, vinegar and olive oil, are for drizzling over the beans before serving. My mother would invariably tell me “most people add vinegar and oil to their black beans”, but she rarely did, as the kids would complain. I also skip the vinegar and oil as they are delicious either way. I say try it without and then if you want to, try adding the vinegar and oil, see what you think.

Serve over white rice or add the rice to your soup bowl. If they are not too thick, you can also eat them as a soup, with crusty Cuban bread.

This blog is already blessing my life, I am making new friends I have not yet met in person, or at least not since I was a small child. One of these friends is Rosa Hernandez, and I am thrilled to introduce her to you. Rosa also grew up in Tuinucu, right around the corner from my grandparents. Our parents were friends, her mother and my father went to school together. She remembers coming over to my grandparents house to see my little sister Nina who was just learning to walk. Rosa loves to read, books are big in her world. She also loves cooking and photography and never goes anywhere without a camera! She likes the beach but prefers mountains and meadows and fields. Rosa loves animals, specially dogs.



Just like in my case, in her younger years she wasn't very Cuba oriented. She says, "It was something I was born into like being a Hernandez or having dark hair or wearing glasses. But once I moved away from Miami, I became more aware of my heritage and now I am very interested in all things Cuban". She is passionate about vintage Cuban music (and I hope she will post about that in the future). She would love to visit Ireland, says she has a strong connection with that country for some unexplained reason.

Rosa & her friend Alicita, in Cuba

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BACALAO CON PAPAS by Rosa Hernandez


Traditionally, this was made with dry bacalao (codfish). Long, thin, dried as a bone salted fish was soaked overnight. However, in the Cuba I knew (under Communism), dry bacalao was no longer available. Fortunately for us my maternal grandfather worked in the trains that went to Trinidad daily so he was able to bring back fresh fish and shrimp from the coast, often. It always came wrapped in newspapers and hidden inside a milkcan, because it was forbidden to buy anything outside your rations. My mom would use whatever fish was available and she would have to omit some ingredients.
Once we came to the United States, although the salted fish was available in the Cuban markets, she was busy with two jobs and taking care of us all and setting up a house from scratch. So she would buy the frozen cod from the American market and skip the soaking as she had already been doing in Cuba. Sometimes depending on her budget, she would use Pollock fish. It tasted the same and was cheaper. I use the frozen cod to this day. This dish is like a stew or fricasse.

INGREDIENTS:

About a pound or so of frozen cod filets
4 medium red potatoes

SOFRITO:

about 3 tbsp olive oil
1 green bell pepper finely chopped
1 large onion finely chopped
3 garlic cloves minced

1 bay leaf
A handful of olives (optional)
1/2 teaspoon of salt (or to taste)
1/2 tablespoon pepper (she and I used white but it's your choice)
1/2 tablespoon oregano
1/2 tablespoon cumin
1/2 cup white cooking wine
about a cup tomato sauce
1/2 cup of water

DIRECTIONS:

Peel the potatoes and cut them up in medium sized chunks. Set them to boil until they are soft enough to be pierced by a fork. Set them aside when done.
Make the sofrito and add the bay leaf after it's done. Simmer this on low for about a minute.
Add cooking wine, spices and water. Stir, cover and cook for about 3 minutes stirring now and then.
Chop the cod filets into medium to large pieces and add to the sofrito mixture. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for about 10 minutes. Keep covered.
Add the potatoes and olives (if using). Stir softly to keep potatoes from breaking up too much. Reduce heat to low. Cook about 5 minutes.
If after 5 minutes it's too watery, uncover and cook another 2 or 3 minutes.

My mother served it over rice. I still do at times but a lot of times I eat it plain with whole wheat rolls.

ACELGA- Swiss Chard

This is one recipe I am particularly fond of because it reminds me of both my parents. My father loved to garden, grow food. When we lived in Miami (and in Cuba of course) he grew platanos (bananas of many kinds), mangos, papaya, vegetables, etc. When my parents moved in with us in Utah, he continued to grow vegetables. Sometimes one garden was not enough, but fortunately we had kind neighbors willing to let him plant gardens in their yards!

Swiss chard was one of the vegetables my father really liked and always planted. Even in Utah it has a long growing season, withstanding heat and cold. Sometimes it would even come back in the Spring, after having been covered with snow for months. It is very dark green, so it has lots of nutrients and a strong taste. My mother prepared it this way and it's delicious. Sometimes I leave out the tomato sauce.

Prepare a Sofrito:

Olive oil to coat frying pan
1 onion
3-5 garlic cloves
1 8 oz can of tomato sauce, you can use fresh tomatoes, but Mamina rarely did
A big huge double hand full of chard, it cooks up into almost nothing
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon cooking wine (optional)

Wash chard, cut off thickest part of stalks, chop and set aside. Chop the onions and garlic, sauté in olive oil for 2-3 minutes, then add the Swiss chard, tomato sauce, salt and cooking wine. Stir then cover it with a lid and simmer on low for 5-6 minutes. I like to serve it on rice.

A great many of the delicious foods that came out of Mamina’s kitchen began with a sofrito. It is the seasoning base for many Cuban dishes. Sofrito is sauted onions, peppers, garlic and sometimes tomatoes.

I love to eat sofrito on crackers, sprinkled with a little salt. I remember as a child, I would be busy playing and in the back of my mind, I would be paying attention to when the smell of the sofrito reached its crescendo. I became quite adept at getting to the kitchen at that crucial moment when the flavors peaked. Too often, though, I would be unwilling to interrupt my games and by the time I got to the kitchen, I had missed it by just a few seconds, such disappointment. The sofrito was gone into the soup! What a waste, I thought at the time.

After my parents came to live with us, my mother loved to make her delicious food for my children. This got her started using a small food processor for making sofrito. She chopped things quite finely because at least one of my sons would not eat anything that had onions in it, if he could recognize them, and it is not Cuban food without onions. I like the texture of onions so I don’t chop so finely, and since I’m not his grandmother I don’t have to cater to that finicky son.

Sometimes in her later years Mamina would separate a little bit of sofrito on a plate for me. By the time I got to it the sofrito would be cold and not quite as yummy as when you get it out of the frying pan during that brief moment of extraordinary flavor. However, I knew she had thought of me, and I felt loved.

To make a basic sofrito, sautée onions, garlic and green peppers in olive oil. The gentle heat persuades them to release their amazing flavors, and when you mix the sofrito into the soup, rice, chicken, etc. the result is a flavor you can’t accomplish with dry spices. Some ingredients increase, decrease or disappear altogether, depending on what the sofrito is meant to flavor, (I will note this when necessary) but this is the basic recipe:

Olive oil to generously coat frying pan
1 onion
1/2 to 1 green bell pepper
3-5 garlic cloves
1 8 oz can of tomato sauce
(You can use fresh tomatoes, but she rarely did.)

Chop the onion, pepper and garlic large or fine, depending on your family’s preference. Sauté vegetables gently in the olive oil over medium heat. When the onions are translucent, add tomato sauce and cook the ingredients on low for a couple of more minutes to blend the flavors. At this point, you can add other things to the sofrito. For example, if you are making sofrito to use in Fricasé, you would add the chicken and potatoes to the sofrito. Otherwise, you can add the sofrito to something else, like beans that have been cooked until soft.

I also love sofrito because it is such a nice simple recipe that can be repeated or modified to bring great results. Just a few steps, a simple thing really, and it makes everything better.

I was trying to think of an acronym to help my children remember what goes into a sofrito. My daughter in law Tara came up with GO GO (garlic, olive oil, green peppers, onions). I guess that could work, since we came to the US in the late 60’s, when there was “go go dancing”, “go go boots” etc, but here is another idea. Just think of OPTIMISM and GRATITUDE, doubled. Two things that always make things better are OPTIMISM and GRATITUDE, especially if you add a little tomato sauce!