to generation of home cooks, when they grow roots in the Americas. Some call it fusion because on American soil different traditions meld to create new flavors. But fusion is an overworked word that has to do with innovative cuisine, and there’s nothing innovative about criollo cooking, unless it’s the innovation created by the accidents of history.
In the States we use the word Creole to refer to the people and, most famously, the cuisine of New Orleans. Indeed, when one thinks of that city and its region, various cultures come to mind: Native American, French, African, Spanish—in very broad terms, since each of those categories encompasses multiple cultures. And one could deconstruct a New Orleans or Louisiana dish, like a gumbo or a jambalaya, to locate the sources of the ingredients and techniques. But this highly celebrated cuisine—rightfully so, I would say—is more than the sum of its influences. In other words, nothing tastes like it. In part this is because as cultures come together, their offspring ripen into something distinct. And in part it is because the women and men in the kitchen have made a difference. This is evident in the city’s rich restaurant scene. On a visit there I get news that a new restaurant is the place to go. And that the restaurant is the idea of a chef who was the sous-chef at another celebrated restaurant, who was the sous-chef at another, all the way back to one of the old classic French Quarter restaurants.
On a visit in the early ’90s, I was fortunate to be in the company of a friend of the seminal San Francisco Bay Area chef Alice Waters. And thanks to that connection, the group I was with was able to secure a table at the restaurant that was all the rage, a new spot called Emeril’s. Little did any of us know that the eponymous chef would become a celebrity and the head of a culinary empire. What impressed me was how the menu had taken the basics of New Orleans cuisine and tweaked it just enough to make a difference. One had the comforting experience of dining on local flavors, but not the same old same old. Emeril Lagasse was one more step in the Creolization process of Creole cuisine.
In my native Cuba, I am a criollo, of course. But most notably, so were about half of my mother’s siblings, who, like her, were born in Cuba to Spanish parents. The other batch of siblings, who were born in Spain, were peninsulares, i.e. from the Iberian peninsula. My grandmother, a legendary cook, would make mostly Spanish dishes. She served them with a side of rice for the criollos and a side of potatoes for the peninsulares. Except for some regional cuisines, like that of Valencia, home of the paella, Spaniards are not as fond of rice as Cubans, and when they eat it, they want it flavored—with saffron, tomatoes, broths, aromatic vegetables. What they like is patatas, as in Spain’s national dish, tortilla de patatas—an omelet with nothing but potatoes and onions. Cubans, for their part, along with other Latin Americans, must have rice, preferably white, with every meal, not unlike the Chinese.
A Cuban meal will feature a Spanish recipe as the main dish. Say, an arroz con pollo. Rice, made yellow with saffron, if one can afford it, but more likely the cheaper annatto. And chicken cut up in pieces. The whole thing is flavored by a sofrito, a classic Spanish sauté of onions, garlic, sweet peppers, and tomatoes. It’s a kind of modest paella, with chicken as the only protein. What makes it Cuban, besides the substitution of annatto for saffron, is the side of fried ripe plantains that always accompanies an arroz con pollo. And so it is with many other dishes, most of them cooked in sofrito, that are served with rice, or rice and beans, plus sides of plantains, yuca, malanga, boniato, ňame—root vegetables of either American or African origin. Or the meal will consist of a big potaje, the kind of bean stew that Spaniards are known for, like fabada (with blood sausage), caldo gallego (chorizo and greens), or sopa de garbanzos (a simplified version of Castilian chickpea cocido). The criollo touch is that these hearty Spanish soups are served with white rice, while at a Spanish table you sop up the broth with crusty bread.
Creolization implies more than a mere change in side dishes. The Spanish word criollo is not racially charged, as Creole sometimes is. In my native Cuba, a criollo, back in colonial days, could be black or white. The word simply meant the person was born on this side of the ocean—an African-born black was called negro de nación, a black of (his) nation. And yet, a subtle racialism, a “taint,” as a nineteenth-century Southerner might have put it, is implied in Creolization. For food is the child of miscegenation. African influences wind their way into Cuban criollo cuisine, as do Native American traditions. The most obvious influence is in the products themselves.
Though the potato my peninsulares aunts and uncles preferred is actually a Native American root (unlike rice, which is Asian in origin), its place in the Spanish menu is well fixed and of long standing. But not so the other root vegetables Cubans eat, like yuca (cassava), a staple of the people Columbus called “Indians.” And, as in the American South, okra, from Africa, is an established criollo vegetable. Thus, the Cuban menu is a mishmash of influences.
Creolization implies a melding of the races, and, more importantly, of cultures. In broad terms, it accounts for a relaxation of a certain European stiffness that was untenable in the New World. Particularly in the heat of the tropics. But further north, this Creole relaxation of manners and mores was also true. In John Barth’s masterful novel The Sot-Weed Factor, the protagonist arrives in the American colonies to find that English ways have degenerated into a kind of, well, sleaze. Another word could be sensuality, an enemy of stiffness. Thus, the Spanish criollo, in contact with the cultures of Africa and the Americas, and in an environment where European culture is not firmly established, is tempted, one might say, to chill—after all, it’s too damn hot. To indulge in pleasures of the senses unknown in the metropolis.
To me, the ultimate criollo dish is the tortilla de plátanos. It’s a variant of the Spanish tortilla de patatas: sliced potatoes fried in olive oil with onions, dumped into beaten eggs, salted, and fried again like an Italian frittata, first one side, then the other. The ultimate Spanish dish, it’s eaten at room temperature. It’s the quintessential tapa to have with wine, and field workers will take it for lunch, stuffed between the top and bottom of a round loaf of bread. Tortilla de plátanos is the same, except that semi-ripe plantains take the place of the spuds. The result is a dish that recalls the original but, I would say, subverts it. For the impartial austerity of the potato yields to the sweetness of the plantain, which is a fruit. That sweetness is almost cloying, but it suits the Cuban sweet tooth. While the quintessentially European flavors of onion and olive oil are satisfying, the sweet notes of the plantain are voluptuous. They are a siren call. Yield to the New World, they say. Yield to the tropics. Regress to your sugar-hungry infancy and childhood. Relax. Recline. Allow seduction.
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With anything having to do with Cuba, sooner or later one gets around to sex. I’m not sure Cuban food is the sexiest around. It’s filling and we eat it in large portions, sending all the blood to the digestive system to handle it, which means there’s little to spare for other activities. And we use garlic generously and eat beans with almost every meal, which present other issues. Nonetheless, there’s an element of indulgence, even in overeating. A letting go, a lassitude. And once the senses take over, all bets are off.
The criollo/Creole phenomenon is what happens when traditional cultures lose their stiffness in the brave new world. It is the shedding of tradition to create a new one, but one that is not ruled by strictures as much as by the call of a relaxed sensuality. French food, to take the most noteworthy example, is truly sensual. Its flavors, sometimes simple, often complicated, are calibrated to give pleasure. It deserves its reputation as the world’s greatest cuisine. And like much of French culture, this cuisine is predicated on tradition and discipline. Comme il faut are the key words. As it must be. How should one eat steak or roast lamb? Saignant, of course. Bleeding. To cook it beyond rare is a crime. To what degree should a dish be cooked? Au point. To the point. What point? Why, the point of perfection, of course.
We criollos commit great gastronomic crimes. We overcook meat and fish (don’t get me started on fish). We miss the point, although a true criollo or criolla cook will brag about having punto, knowing instinctively how much time, how much seasoning, how much anything, without having to stop and taste. (I confess to no-punto; I stop and taste.)
