Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Cuba!: Recipes and Stories from the Cuban Kitchen by Dan Goldberg, Andrea Kuhn, Jody Eddy


28364024
4 Stars




I thought eating goat would guaranty the Cubs a victory in Game 1 of the World Series . . . .











In case you are unaware of some pretty important sportsball history, in 1945 a dumb motherfucker Billy Sianis thought it would be totes cool to bring his pet goat in to Wrigley Field in order to watch Game 4 of the Series. After being booted on his ass (as should have happened) Sianis cursed the Cubs' organization with a promise that they would never win a world series again. And they haven't. In order to do my part in hopes of reversing the curse, I decided to pull out all the stops and cook the other other white meat . . . .











It’s what’s for dinner.





Alright, so I loooooooooove cookbooks. Like I love them so much I’m getting ready to pull one over on my husband Jeffrey . . . . wait, that’s The Barefoot Contessa’s husband’s name, not mine. Anyway, I want to sneak a bookshelf into the kitchen and Jeffrey or whatever his name is will just have to deal with it. I also understand why cookbooks cost so much money (assuming the book in question is – you know – a good one). Full color photography and sets and whatnot cost dollar dollar bills yo. That doesn’t change the fact that I am as broke as a mothereffin’ joke. At $22.50 retail Cuba!: Recipes and Stories from the Cuban Kitchen actually is quite the steal . . . . but I still prefer to get things for free.





(This is where I talk about the boring cooking part. If you want some funny ha-ha go read one of Ed’s cookbook reviews instead.)





The cover of this one alone was enough to make me want a copy. The sucker is just puuuuurrrrrty. And filling the pages with not only recipes but stories about Cuban culture and history was a winner with the bibliophile in me. When I sat down this weekend to peruse the selections to see what I could possibly cook a few recipes got post-it noted as possibilities, but (as stated above) the winner was glaringly obvious as soon as I saw it.





The first issue we had to deal with was obtaining goat meat. Butcher shop #1 gave us the option of “whole” or “half” and we ain’t talking pounds, kids. As much as I would have liked to channel my inner Big Fat Greek Wedding, I didn’t have time to build a pit in the backyard so that wasn’t going to work. Hubs called butcher shop #2 who had frozen goat meat available so that was the winner.

I left work early . . . . because priorities . . . . ran to the grocery store to pick up the other ingredients and came home to hopefully not kill my family with tainted meat start cookin’ . . . .











(Why yes, that does say “goat cubes” – I hope they didn’t pay the marketing person a whole lot to come up with that winner of a name.)





As you can see, there’s nothing complex about this recipe. (Sidenote: For any new cooks, I highly recommend you get recipes/cookbooks from any country other than ‘Murica (unless you have the chance to get a Martha Stewart cookbook because she is a goddess).) Good food doesn’t have to be complicated and I’ve found non-U.S. recipes do a good job at using the ol’ K.I.S.S. plan. This one did the same – meat, carrots, peppers, onion, tomatoes, cumin and oregano is about all there was to it. Served over a bed of rice it made for quite the pretty picture once complete . . . .











Too bad the Cubs couldn’t pull out a victory. Maybe I should have killed a goat????? Mitchell says next time. Let’s hope our boys in blue can get it done tonight - and that they partner Arrieta up with Grandpa Ross because they are magic together . . . .











If you won’t do it for my goat eating family, Cubs, do it for Harry and Bill . . . .











ARC provided by Crowne Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

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