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Many can’t think of that Cuban dish of black beans without
the aromatic touch provided by a good cup of red wine in the nick
of cooking time. Shrimps seasoned with red hot peppers –so
much coveted in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo- take in some
white wine and beer, let alone the tasty rice and chicken and the
respectable chicken fricassee, so popular in the entire Spanish-speaking
Caribbean.
Dry sherry is the nitty-gritty pour when it comes to cooking
roast pork or the Puerto Rican-style stuffed roast meat, as well
as red wine is a must when doing rabbit and white wine ought to
be close at hand when grilling pheasant. In Cuba, the so-called
dry wine is widely used in seasoning stews and mixed rice.
White wine, red wine, sherry, beer, dry wine… you name
it! There are other recipes, though, that perfectly take either
silver-dry or golden rum during the cooking process. They are
not so many, but I’ve always thought –and practice
has been a true confirmation- that dry wine and other wines, as
well as cognac, brandy and whiskey can really be replaced by rum
in almost all red and white meat recipes; not to mention there
are some desserts that will never pack a tasty wallop if they
lack the magic touch only the gleeful spin-off of sugar cane can
provide. Just to relate a handful of cases in point, rum is an
ingredient in fruit salads and Puerto Rico’s tembleque.
And I don’t want to talk about those delicious guava halves
sprinkled with drunken cheese.
Let’s see a couple of recipes.
Isla Bella Sauce
Mayonnaise and ketchup in a bowl. Pour some golden rum and orange
juice until you churn out a homogeneous mixture. Add a pinch of
salt and pepper. Sprinkle some thinly sliced parsley on top.
Red snapper a la rum
Skin and bone a red snapper of approximately 7kg. Season with
peeled and crushed garlic, salt, bay leaf, thyme, chard, coriander,
tomato, onion and lemon juice. Slice 900g of peeled potatoes and
put them in a baking pan. Smear the fish in cooking oil –especially
the head- and wrap it up in foil paper, equally oiled. Put the
red snapper in the baking pan and add ¾ lt. of concentrated
fish broth plus a whole bottle of silver-dry rum. Keep the baking
pan in the oven at 300 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. When that
time is up, take it out of the oven and remove the foil paper
thoroughly. Sprinkle the red snapper once again with the seasoning
sauce and the remaining broth and rum contained in the baking
pan, only to put it back in the oven without the foil paper. Pour
little cups of the remaining quarter of fish broth and the rum
to let them soak well into the red snapper. Keep an eye on it
every now and then to prevent it from getting overcooked. When
it’s ready, strain the seasoning and the sauce, pour them
both on top of the red snapper and serve with lemon slices. |
