Of all the countries in the world whose cooking I would like to learn, I always thought Cuba's would remain last on the list.
Yes, there are hundreds of restaurants in Miami dishing up succulent ropa vieja (black beans and rice alongside tender beef, stewed for many hours). But ever since my first trip to Havana 10 years ago, I had associated Cuban cuisine with dry beans and rice, cabbage and cucumber salad, and a muscular chicken leg that tasted as if the chicken had had trouble procuring its seed ration.
A decade later, things haven't changed that much. But on a January evening, after my picky-eater son had consumed a bowl of curried chickpea soup with golden swirls of fat dancing on its surface, I found myself asking for the recipe.
We were staying at Casa Liana and Lily, one of the many private homes that open their doors to travellers who choose to trade the comforts of all-inclusive resorts for the experience of living in a Cuban home and the chance to improve their Spanish through conversations about the future or the differences in family life. In a two-week trip crisscrossing the country and staying at casas particulares, we hardly noticed we were making a sacrifice. With the exception of a one-night misfire in Cienfuegos, our casas had terraces or balconies, modern bathrooms, plenty of hot water (always a concern in Cuba), and hosts who cooked better dinners than those at most of the restaurants we tried.
Liana's casa was located in the green valley of Vinales, a three-hour bus ride west of Havana. In Vinales, the roosters wake up at 3 and the mist rises over the hills a few hours later as the town comes alive with the morning sounds of children heading to school in horse-drawn wagons and shepherds leading their animals to pasture. It's a divine rural setting popular with hikers and spelunkers, and we had lucked into staying at the town's unofficial headquarters. From the rocking chairs on our porch, we had a front-row seat to life in Cuba.
Liana is a nurse and practises as much from her post in front of the stove as from the hospital where she works. She stood in the kitchen, stirring, chopping and stewing while examining X-rays, giving advice, fielding phone calls and keeping a vigilant eye on her guests. (We had been lectured on not giving fresh coconut to our six-year-old. I still don't know if she was correct in the dangers it can pose, but she was so persuasive I didn't dare.)
Behind our living quarters, Liana and her family – she lives in the main house with her parents and her daughter – grow lettuce, Swiss chard, tomatoes and onions, and were raising two pigs. (Later in our trip, another host family told me that the sale of one pig could furnish enough money to build a guest apartment or renovate a bathroom. Indeed, two pigs had built the mini-hacienda in which we slept in Trinidad, a 500-year-old city in the centre of Cuba.) Liana's vegetables tasted as you would expect something to taste if it travelled a distance of only 10 metres to your plate.
When I asked for the recipe for the chickpea soup, everything stopped. She came out on the terrace where our dinner had been served – and began to explain as her mom listened. (She and her mother had also made us fish in black bean sauce, salads, tender black beans and rice, bananas fried in honey, and a few other dishes.)
