Ropa Vieja of Cuba

WAKE FOREST -- As familiar as Americans are with the politics and music of Cuba, many have some big misconceptions about the food of the island nation.

Many think that Cuban food is like Mexican or Central American cooking, full of corn tortillas, hot chiles and cilantro. Not at all, says Jackie Cid, chef-owner of Havana Jax Cafe.

"It's a Caribbean country. The primary staple is rice," she says. "People tend to stereotype the food. It's not spicy, but it is very flavorful."

"Es muy diferente," chimes in Cid's mother, Nerida Diaz. Diaz rules the restaurant kitchen, just as she did the kitchen at her home in Güines (GWEE-naiz), a small town near Havana, and when the family immigrated to Florida.

Cid is the only one of Diaz's three children born in the United States. Cid's father left Cuba in 1954 and sent for the family shortly after.

Cid graduated from Johnson & Wales in Florida, but the food the family loves to prepare and eat is Cuban home cooking. For them, home was Güines.

Gü is in a fertile agricultural area, where farmers grow vegetables as well as sugar cane and tobacco.

"She says that the farmers would share their crops, and that's how you'd make a meal. She's always telling me that the food was more natural, and you didn't have to add so much salt and other things to make it taste good," says Cid, translating for her mother.

The area grew so many kinds of root vegetables that it was nicknamed "el pueblo de las papas," the town of the potatoes. Not conventional potatoes, though, but such things as yuca (also known as cassava) and boniato, starchy roots that are boiled, then mashed and seasoned or fried.

Besides white rice, beans -- red, black or garbanzo -- are another staple. They're combined with rice or seasoned with a bit of flank steak or salted pig's feet. If you could afford nothing else to eat, Cid says, there was always rice and beans.

One thing that makes Cuban food different from that of Central America or Mexico is the African influence. After the Spanish conquered the island in the 1500s and destroyed the native population, African slaves were brought in. As happened in the American South, the slaves brought their own vegetables and ways of cooking, and combined them with the existing foods.

Another similarity with Southern cooking is pork: Cubans also like to use every part of a pig but the squeal.

For Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve or other big occasions, Cubans traditionally roast a whole pig, Cid says. In Florida, her family would dig a hole in the back yard, line it with banana leaves and pit-cook the pig, coating it liberally with homemade mojo.

Mojo (pronounced MO-ho) along with sofrito (so-FREE-toh) are two of the classic Cuban seasonings. And every cook has a secret recipe.

Mojo can be used as a marinade or a sauce for just about anything -- from grilled chicken to fried plantains -- and typically includes citrus juice with other seasonings. In Cuba, sour orange juice, a Caribbean delicacy, is used. The bottled juice can be found at Latino markets or in supermarkets with large Hispanic food sections. Some people substitute half regular orange juice and half lemon juice for it.

"You can do that, but it doesn't taste the same," Cid says.

Diaz's version of the addictive mojo combines sour orange juice with cumin, garlic and other spices.

Sofrito is the Cuban version of the French mirepoix, a chopped mixture used to flavor food during cooking. But carrots and celery are never used in sofrito, Cid says. Onions, green peppers, garlic, oregano and bay leaves are common. Cilantro is more often included in Puerto Rican sofrito than Cuban sofrito.

Sofrito is a key ingredient in the recipe that follows for Ropa Vieja, a classic Cuban recipe for flank steak. The name means "old clothes" in Spanish and that's what the shredded beef should look like -- stringy rags.

Cid says that the dishes she serves at the restaurant are the ones she remembers from home. Until her sister recently found another job, the restaurant was a family kitchen, with everyone working there except Cid's father, who died several years ago.

But he is there, too, in a way.

"My family was a little different," Cid says. "My dad loved to cook. He would be in the kitchen, trying to tell [my mother] how to cook."