Cuban Creole Cuisine

June 12, 2010

Cuban Creole Cuisine

Cuban cuisine is the result of five centuries of cultural exchange. During the first century of the Spanish conquest, settlers added the culinary traditions of the Iberian Peninsula to the gastronomic heritage of the Cuban aboriginal population, who based their diet mostly on cassava roots.
In the beginning, the main dishes were the improvised soldiers’ military rations in the fields, but later more typical Spanish recipes were introduced—including the most refined—and were prepared at the homes of military commanders, civilian governors, wealthy landlords and settlers.
The slave trade introduced new ways of cooking by the domestic African slaves that soon substituted Spanish housewives in the family kitchen and originated what has been named “Creole cuisine”.
Some time later, the incoming waves of French refugees escaping from rebellious Haiti added the first elements of French and Caribbean cooking, mostly in eastern Cuba. Finally, Chinese coolies taken to work in the island, made their own contributions.
Well into the twentieth century, influences from Jamaican and Haitian sugarcane immigrant farm workers, and recipes from the U.S. and other countries—for example, French and Italian cooking—, plus the introduction of new utensils and more modern kitchen appliances, completed the rainbow-colored mosaic that is rightfully known today as “Cuban cuisine”.
Much of the early culinary tradition of Cuba was included in the original Spanish version of my English translation of Nitza Villapol’s recipe book Cuban Flavor: Typical Creole Cuisine Recipes, which includes more than a hundred old-fashioned and present-day recipes of entrées, soups, main courses, side dishes, salads, home-made desserts, cold beverages and even cocktails.

[Book cover: Nitza Villapol: Cuban Flavor: Typical Creole Cuisine Recipes, Editorial José Martí, 1999.]

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