An evocative feast for all the senses, A Taste of Old Cuba combines a Cuban expatriate's charming and vivid memories of a childhood on the idyllic island before Castro's revolution with more than 150 recipes for delicious, authentic, and traditional Cuban dishes.

Contains more than 190 recipes that celebrate the cuisine of Cuba.

Havana is one of the oldest and most picturesque cities of the western hemisphere. It was a popular winter destination for North American tourists in the 1950s, and this cookbook recaptures the spirit of Old Havana-- Habana la vieja-- and its celebrated culinary traditions. Cuban cuisine, though derived from its mother country, Spain, has been modified and refined by locally available foods like pork, rice, corn, beans and sugar, and the requirements of a tropical climate. Fine Gulf Stream fish, crabs and lobsters, and an almost infinite variety of vegetables and luscious tropical fruits also have their places on the traditional Cuban table. This cookbook includes over 50 recipes, each in Spanish with side-by-side English translation-- all of them classic Cuban fare and old Havana specialties adapted for the North American kitchen. Among the recipes included are: Ajiaco (famous Cuban Stew), Boiled Pargo with Avocado Sauce, Lobster Havanaise, Tamal en Cazuela (Soft Tamal), Quimbombo (okra), Picadillo, Roast Suckling Pig, and Boniatillo (Sweet Potato Dulce), along with a whole chapter on famous Cuban cocktails and beverages.

James Beard Award–Winning Author: Savor a deliciously complex culinary culture with 120 recipes and gorgeous photos. Spanish, Native American, African, Chinese, and French traditions have all contributed to Cuban cooking, producing a distinctive Caribbean cuisine as richly chorded as the island’s music. Beverly Cox and Martin Jacobs’s itinerary takes them from the barrio, paladars (private restaurants), and chic nightspots of Havana to the eateries of Florida’s emigré communities. From their journeys, they’ve gathered more than 120 recipes that comprehensively document Cuban cooking’s diversity, from the black bean soup found on any Cuban table, to the empanadas sold by Havana’s street vendors, to the grilled sandwiches that are a mainstay of Miami’s Calle Ocho, to the innovative dishes devised by chefs at top Cuban restaurants. Gorgeously illustrated with Jacobs’s photographs —many shot on the authors’ travels through Cuba—Eating Cuban highlights Cuban food’s historical roots, the classic Creole dishes that evolved from these disparate cultural influences, current trends in Cuban cooking, street foods and on-the-go snacks, and quintessential Cuban beverages from café Cubano to the mojito. In addition, a valuable resource list helps American cooks locate the required ingredients, and a restaurant directory points the way to the very best in Cuban cuisine—in Cuba and the U.S.

A lush journey through Cuba, its paladars, and its flavorful cuisine For Cubans, food is a complex story—a tapestry of love and loss woven so deeply into their culture that it goes well beyond that of history or sustenance. Gershman, who’s love affair with Cuba began long before her first visit, takes you along on a photojournalistic journey through the streets of Cuba and its paladares through her stunning photographs of the country’s glorious sights, the lively people, and, of course, the amazing variety of food. Much more than a cookbook, Cuban Flavor is an introduction to a revolutionary era of Cuban cuisine: a new frontier. Growth and transition foster the seed of invention and innovation, and these shifts often begin with food. From the succulent spiced meat of the national Ropa Viejo, simmered in a tomato-based criollo sauce, to the sweet and sticky Arroz Con Leche or the local favorite, Flan served in a soda can, Cuban cuisine has something for every palate. Pair these delights with a warm, sultry night, an old convertible, and a jazz band, and sit back as you fall deeply in love again . . . or for the very first time. This visually arresting volume features more than fifty Cuban recipes, from appetizers to main courses and drinks to desserts. Along with color photographs of the dishes, you’ll also get to meet the people who create them. This remarkable volume offers a taste of the little-known culture to a public that has long been deprived of its intoxicating flavors.

Born into a well-to-do family in Cuba in 1953, Eduardo Machado saw firsthand the effects of the rising Castro regime. When he and his brother were sent to the United States on one of the Peter Pan flights of 1961, they did not know if they would ever see their parents or their home again. From his experience living in exile in Los Angeles to becoming an actor, director, playwright and professor in New York, Machado explores what it means to say good-bye to the only home one’s ever known, and what it means to be a Latino in America today. Filled with delicious recipes and powerful tales of family, loss, and self discovery, Tastes Like Cuba delivers the story of Eduardo’s rich and delectable life—reminding us that no matter where we go, there is no place that feels (and tastes) better than home.

Change looms in Havana, Cuba's capital, a city electric with uncertainty yet cloaked in cliché, 90 miles from U.S. shores and off-limits to most Americans. Journalist Julia Cooke, who lived there at intervals over a period of five years, discovered a dynamic scene: baby-faced anarchists with Mohawks gelled with laundry soap, whiskey-drinking children of the elite, Santería trainees, pregnant prostitutes, university graduates planning to leave for the first country that will give them a visa. This last generation of Cubans raised under Fidel Castro animate life in a waning era of political stagnation as the rest of the world beckons: waiting out storms at rummy hurricane parties and attending raucous drag cabarets, planning ascendant music careers and black-market business ventures, trying to reconcile the undefined future with the urgent today. Eye-opening and politically prescient, The Other Side of Paradise offers a deep new understanding of a place that has so confounded and intrigued us.