Cuisine

Cuban

Ropa vieja is flank or similar beef cooked until it shreds into a tomato-pepper sauce. The name means old clothes: strands of meat in a stew of onion, garlic, cumin, oregano and bell pepper. It is eaten with white rice, black beans and often fried plantain. The beef should be simmered first, shredded, then finished in the sofrito so it drinks the sauce. This is a Spanish-named pot that Cuba cooked into a national leftover-and-celebration dish. It is not a Mexican chilli, and it is not Venezuelan shredded beef without the cumin-pepper pitch.

Spanish ropa vieja and Canary Island cooking travelled to the Caribbean; Cuba's version became the one most cookbooks print. African and Caribbean plantain, rice and beans sit beside the Spanish sofrito. The dish is also cooked in other Latin kitchens with local changes. Sugar-mill and urban Havana food, later Miami exile restaurants, standardised the plate of rice, beans, ropa vieja and plantain. Cuban cooking also includes roast pork, mojo, and a sandwich culture this catalog does not hold. The shredded beef pot is the honest centre of the list.

Sofrito first: onion, pepper, garlic, tomato. Cumin and oregano are the spice, not a packet of chilli powder. Shred along the grain. The sauce should be thick enough to cling, not a soup. Rice and beans are the structure. Cuban food overlaps other Caribbean Spanish-African kitchens and keeps a mild, cumin-forward sofrito. It is not Jamaican jerk heat and not Mexican salsa heat. If the beef is cubed and the sauce is chilli-hot, you have left Havana.