Category: tuesday tip

Our traditional Christmas Eve meal is roast pork and I always make a baked ham so that we can make Cuban sandwiches with the leftovers. Cuban sandwiches are tasty grilled sandwiches that contain pork, ham, and swiss cheese. They are made on Cuban bread which is a light bread made with lard and similar to Italian bread. The main difference is that Cuban bread is wider and the crust is much lighter, making it perfect for grilling. In this video I’m using Media Noche bread which is a soft, sweet, and eggy bread! In the books in the South Beach Security Series, the characters head to Little Havana to have some Cubanos!

Ingredients

3-4 thick slices roast pork
3-4 slices baked ham
2-3 slices Swiss cheese
yellow mustard
thin-sliced dill pickles
6-8″ long piece Cuban bread (or Italian bread/hero roll)

Directions

Slice open the bread and layer it with the roast pork, ham, swiss cheese, and pickles. Spread a thin layer of yellow mustard on the top slice of the bread. Personally, I never ate mine with pickles and mustard since I’m not a pickle fan. Lately, I have been eating my Cubanos with mustard. It does add some pep to the taste!

Close the sandwich and butter the outside of the bread. If you have a panini grill or other kind of sandwich grill, use that to flatten and toast the sandwich. You should let it cook for at least 10 minutes or so to let the meats and cheese heat up.

If you don’t have a panini grill, lay the sandwiches on a greased baking sheet. Cover the sandwiches with aluminum foil and place a heavy cast iron pan on top. Press down and bake in a 350-degree oven for about 15 minutes or so.

P.S. – Did you know that both Miami and Tampa lay claim to the invention of Cuban bread? You can click here to read more about the origins of Cuban bread in Tampa.

In our house, Christmas Eve is a mix of Italian, Cuban and American foods, but the signature dish has to be the Cuban-style citrus-marinated roast pork.

It is a family affair to cook the roast pork since we start preparing it the night before after a trip to Union City, New Jersey to pick up some Cuban staples and the pork leg.

I used to feed anywhere from 15 to 25 people on Christmas Eve, but now my daughter has taken over the tradition. We’re expecting about 19 people for this year’s festivities and I can’t wait to share the night with family and friends. For that many people, we need a really really big pork leg (pork shoulder/picnic ham/pernil). We normally get a piece of pork that weighs around 25 pounds, but you can buy a much smaller piece and adjust the cooking times (more on that later).

Ingredients:

10-15 navel oranges
10 lemons
10 limes
6-8 Seville (aka Sour) Oranges
6 pink grapefruit
10-20 cloves of finely chopped garlic
Ground cumin
bay leaves
Pork leg/shoulder/picnic ham

Directions:

Juice all the above citrus into a large pot. We use one of those large buckets in which your grocery store deli get its potato salad, etc. Drop by and ask them for one! Ours is only used for the Christmas Eve pork.

The citrus mix should be sour, but with a strong hit of sweet (the navel oranges and grapefruit really help with that). You should have enough citrus juice to fully cover your piece of pork. Once you’ve tasted the sweet/sour mix, then add 3 to 4 bay leaves, about a half cup of garlic (less for a smaller piece of pork) and about 1/4 cup of cumin. Mix this all up.

Take your piece of pork and make multiple slits in it so that the marinade can penetrate into the meat. Place the pork leg in the citrus juice, cover and refrigerate. You’re probably wondering how I keep that big bucket cold? I put the bucket in a big cooler filled with ice.

In the morning (around 6 a.m. or so) pre-heat the oven to 425. Remove the pork from the citrus and place it in a large roasting dish. Keep some of the citrus juice, bay leaves and garlic for use as a marinade. Discard the rest. Ladle about 1 to 2 cups over the pork and then stick the pork into the oven for one hour at 425. For a smaller piece of pork, cut down this initial high temp roast accordingly. For ten pounds make it around 30 minutes, anything smaller than that no more than about 15 minutes.

Do not baste the pork during this high heat roast.

When the high heat roast time is up, baste the pork and lower the oven temp to 325. Then cook until the meat pulls away from the bone in the leg and is starting to fall off. Marinate every half an hour or so during the cooking process. For a 25 pound pork leg, I will cook it for about 8 to 9 hours. The pork will turn this beautiful mahogany brown and just melt in your mouth.

For smaller pieces of pork, adjust the cooking times. A 10 pound picnic ham may take only about 4 or so hours. The key is to keep basting and cooking at a low temp to keep the meat juicy.

If the pork begins to brown too much, just cover with aluminum and keep on cooking until the meat is fork tender.

Hope you enjoyed this recipe! If you try it yourself, let me know how it goes!

OMG, Thanksgiving flew by, and now it’s time to deck the halls and jingle all the way! In our Cuban-Italian family, the real party is on Christmas Eve. We all come together, devouring a feast of delicious traditional treats, talking the night away, and then unwrapping presents before getting back to the table for a sweet dessert. Our spread is a heavenly mix of Italian and Cuban flavors, and one of my favorite dishes is the black beans on top of rice. So simple, yet so special. Today, I’m letting you in on our family recipe. It’s the same base recipe for red beans or lentils if you’re feeling adventurous, but just a heads up, I always like to throw in a ham bone or some porky goodness to make it extra hearty when I use those instead of black beans.

Caridad’s Cuban Black Beans!

Ingredients

To start:

1 lb. dried black beans
1 lg. onion, cut into eighths
1 red pepper, cut into eighths
3 to 6 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
1 tsp cumin powder
1/8 cup olive oil
1 cup red wine (not salty cooking wine — real red wine)
salt and pepper to taste
32 ounces (1 box) of vegetable broth
1-2 cups of water (enough to cover the beans)

To finish the beans:

1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 a red pepper, chopped
2 to 3 cloves, minced
1/8 cup olive oil
1/2 cup sherry

Cooking the beans:

There are those who believe in soaking the beans overnight. My family never did this, but it will speed up the cooking time. The one thing to remember is — DO NOT THROW OUT THE SOAKING WATER! It has a lot of the flavor from the beans and you will lose all that flavor if you toss it. Also, don’t soak the beans too long or they will begin to ferment.

If you don’t soak, it will mean simmering the beans for a longer amount of time, but on a cold day, the smell and heat are a welcome thing.

So, before you soak (or not), rinse the beans to get rid of any field dirt and also, pick through them for any bad beans or small stones. Yes, there can be stones. I’ve found one or two in the many years I’ve made the beans.

Once the beans are clean, place them in a stockpot, Dutch oven, or heavy cast iron kettle. Add the broth, water, wine, bay leaves, onion, pepper, and cumin, salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Make sure to stir a few times to make sure the beans are not sticking to the bottom.

Once the water is boiling, turn it down so that it is a slow simmer. Simmer with the cover on for at least 3 to 4 hours. Stir occasionally. The water should start to thicken from the beans. You can test to see if the beans are done by tasting one. It should not be hard. If you are running out of water, add some more, little by little.

Once the beans are soft, finish the beans by frying up the onion, red pepper and garlic and add it to the cooked beans along with the sherry. Adjust the taste with salt to your liking.

You can serve the beans over white rice. Cubans call this moros y cristianos. You can also eat this alone as a soup. If you do this, garnish it with raw onions, cheddar cheese, avocados, and/or chopped ham.

Hope you like today’s Cook’s Treat. If you try it out, please let me know how you liked it!

I don’t know about you, but with prices going up on everything, I’ve become much more aware of how to save money. I’ve always used coupons and bought things on sale which has helped. But you don’t normally get coupons or sales on gas, do you? Well, I’ve got some news for you! My sis turned me on to the Phillips 66 app which saves you anywhere from 5 cents per gallon to 15 cents per gallon. I was hesitant, especially since you have to connect the app to your checking account to get the 15 cents off, but so far so good. On the first fill-up with the app, you also get 20 cents off per gallon. You can bet that I made sure my tank was pretty low before taking advantage of that and saved nearly $4 on that fill-up. You can check out the terms of the app and how it works at https://www.phillips66gas.com/promotions. If you’re not sure that this app is for you, try out GasBuddy which helps you find local gas prices and also has a gas card that saves you money. If you try out the GasBuddy gas card, I’d love to hear from you about how it works!

Happy Read an Ebook Week! To help you find a book to celebrate, you can find almost my entire collection at a promotional price (including free) at @Smashwords from March 5-11. Find my books at https://bit.ly/CaridadSmashwordsEbooks Also, don’t forget to enter my Birthday Giveaway at https://bit.ly/CaridadBirthdayGiveaway for a chance to win some awesome goodies including a $25 gift card!