As they did in Africa, enslaved Afro Cuban cooks furnished the big house table with rice in addition to other side dishes. As in low country South Carolina and Georgia, Cuban cooks viewed a huge dish of cooked rice as an absolute essential of any meal they served. Without it Cubans of all classes regarded meat and other dishes at the table with indifference. Similar culinary habits exist today in Mexico City. The chief at La Calle restaurant in Santa Fee served me this fish dish a la Vera Cruzano on a roasted slice of pineapple and a rice and vegetable side dish pictured here.
I met a young Haitian brother at the Culinary Institute of America during a stop on my Hog and Hominy book tour. During my talk I mentioned the centrality of rice as a West African culinary survival. After the lecture the brother said to me, “You know we Haitians make the best rice.” I’m always amazed at ethnocentric claims of cooking superiority by region, nation, and continent. As someone interesting in eat healthy, I always find it difficult to find brown rice at restaurant unless it's a Asian restaurant and even then it's hard to come by.
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