GOURMET: Let’s start in this country. Do you think that Latin food in the United States ever improves on the original?
Maricel Presilla: Well, when I serve my own version of the Cuban fresh-corn tamal to my Cuban friends and family, I don’t hear complaints. In fact, everyone wants the recipe! So the answer is yes. But cuisines lose their essence when cooks are careless, and it is true that much Latin food in the U.S. has been dumbed down. Our food, you see, is all about layered flavor and elbow grease, and each regional cuisine has a particular flavor palette. Use less fat in your cooking, play with presentations if you like, but do not alter those regional flavors gratuitously.
So how can we make sense of all the flavor palettes in Latin America?
It helps to look at culture instead of at specific countries. When the Spanish and Portuguese arrived, they carried with them memories of a world built on fusions of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish culinary traditions. They were influenced not only by the pre-Columbian civilizations they found, but also by the Africans they brought in as slaves, although we can’t speak of African cuisines being transplanted intact to the Americas. What Africans kept were general attitudes about food and seasonings. Asians (thousands of Cantonese and Hakka arrived in the 1800s) and Canary Islanders have long been a part of the mix, as have other Europeans, such as the Italians who came in great numbers in the 19th century. Every Latin American—from the potato farmer in the highlands of Peru to the Yanomami in the Venezuelan Amazon and the black matron who makes a living frying black-eyed-pea fritters in the streets of Salvador do Bahia—has been touched by Iberian colonialism.
Geography is another huge factor. Take the Hispanic Caribbean. To me, it’s more than Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. It’s a broad region defined by its mixed Iberian, Native American, and African heritage, and it stretches to the Caribbean coast of Central America and on down to Brazil.
We’re glad you brought up the Hispanic Caribbean. Can you help us sort out the cuisines of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico?
The three islands, which share the same geographic region, developed under Spanish colonial rule, which accounts for the similarities in their cooking styles. Cuba, in fact, had very strong commercial ties with Spain and was a major importer of Spanish olive oil until Castro. (Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic relied more on lard and vegetable oils.) Many of the differences stem from sofritos (cooking sauces) and adobos (marinades). A Cuban sofrito is milder and less aromatic than a Dominican or Puerto Rican one (which are both rich in cilantro, an old-world herb; culantro, a similiar tasting new-world herb; and the tiny pepper known as ají dulce), although all three rely on the long, sweet, light-green Cubanelle pepper, which is often called an Italian frying pepper here in the States. The acid in a Cuban adobo is generally the juice of the bitter Seville orange, while the other two islands rely on vinegar. Taste our big tuber-laden soups, the Cuban ajiaco and the Puerto Rican and Dominican sancochos—three siblings born of the marriage of the Taíno Indian pepperpot and the Castilian olla podrida. The ajiaco is thicker, milder, and lighter in color than the earthier sancochos, which are tinted red by achiote and taste of cilantro and culantro. Cubans living in the United States seem to be closer to Americans in their red-meat-eating preferences; they often shun tripe, stomach, and brains, which are considered delicacies by Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.
You also have to realize that when Cubans left their island, they settled not only in Miami but in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and in parts of the U.S. where Puerto Ricans and Dominicans lived, like upper Manhattan and Hudson County in New Jersey. They opened the same kind of restaurants there that they created in Miami, based on the café culture so important in Cuba. So in some of the Puerto Rican and Dominican restaurants in the States, Cuban sandwiches and black-bean soups happily coexist with Puerto Rican cuchifritos (fried tidbits) and Dominican mangú (plantain purée).
Could you describe the significance of sofrito in the Latin world?
Sofrito is a medieval cooking preparation that came to Latin America with the Spanish and Portuguese. Think of it as the DNA of the Latin kitchen, carrying a basic flavor code. It’s a mélange of aromatic vegetables—most importantly, onions and garlic—sautéed in lard or oil. (The fat used determines much of the flavor.) To this, Latin Americans add pork products such as bacon or ham, herbs and spices, chiles and tomatoes, cheese, or coconut milk, according to regional preferences. A sofrito is incorporated into rice dishes, soups, stews, and braises, or it becomes a sauce in its own right, as in a Mexican mole.
Can you tell us about the different forms that corn takes?
Fresh corn is enjoyed as a vegetable in Latin America, but dried corn has many more uses, and the way it’s processed has a big impact. In Mexico, parts of Central America, and the Andes, it’s treated with an alkali such as slaked lime (cal) to remove the hulls. This is called nixtamalization (from the Nahuatl, or Aztec, word nextli, which means “ashes”), and it also affects the chemical composition of the kernels, making them more digestible and nutritious. Nixtamalized corn has a peculiar taste that reminds me of a gush of rain on hot pavement, and an earthy quality that is a seal of identity. It can be eaten in a bowl of pozole (called mote in the Andes), cooked further with various ingredients and sauces, or ground into a dough (masa) to make tortillas-, tamales, and all kinds of appetizers. While cooks in rural Mexico still make masa by hand, grinding it in a three-legged stone metate, most city people—and Mexicans in the U.S.—use preground commercial brands.
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