IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 3 ENGLISH | Page 82

Ingredients for
Cuban ajiaco Stew
Ricardo Lazo Páez
Gastronome
Havana, Cuba

C

ulinary art is a phenomenon of socio-cultural life that plays with the limits of the
material and spiritual. Of course, its primary objective is to quell hunger and thirst or,
more precisely, offer a nutritional and caloric support that allows for an individual’s growth and development, thus, survival of the species. Yet
foods and drinks also have another invaluable
function; they promote human relations, mold behaviors and rules for social interaction, and generate an accumulation of traditions—both within
and without the family.
These reveal ethno-cultural particularities and
differences from which the identities of different
peoples are formed.
Cuban criollo cooking is eaten in innumerable
places all around the world. No one can escape its
charm, which results from its delicious blend of
multinational ingredients.
Our ajiaco stew—a term used by Don Fernando
Ortiz to reflect the pluralist origin of Cuban nationality—has a lot of flavor. It is quite difficult
to categorically confirm that one dish or another
is entirely Hispanic, African, native or of any
other origin. All throughout Cuba’s long process
of transculturation, the ingredients contributed by
each of the components have fused and become
modified, resulting in a qualitatively different
product. A relatively recent and very interesting
phenomenon is the explosion there’s been in eat-

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ing establishments, most of them private or belonging to foreign entities. On their menus, they
rescue culinary traditions from the native regions
in a perfect symbiosis with dishes more representative of our national food. These places have
always existed, but now there are more, and the
word ‘explosion’ refers not only to the great number of them, but also to the permanent presence in
them of foreign diners and, in a more modest
number, of Cubans, since prices at these places
are not affordable for everyday Cubans.
Havana restaurants like Castropol and the groups
Los Nardos / El Asturianito / El Trofeo, which belong to the Asturian organizations, offer visitors
food most representative of Cuban and Spanish
cooking. The wide network of businesses in Havana’s Chinatown, which a few decades ago was
extremely strict about revealing the secrets of its
local cuisine, now even includes Cuban dishes
with Asian influence in recognition of that culture’s contributions to our culinary legacy. Yet,
given the essential core of Cuban criollo cooking
is Hispano-African, it is noteworthy that so little
is known about the rich African ethnic influence.
Is it so negligible or insignificant?
Various factors make it possible to understand
that the arrival on masse of Africans to our shores
didn’t bring with it the introduction and establishment of a broad variety of food products from
their places of origin: