Arroz a la Cubana

Four things cooked separately and plated together, never mixed in the pan.

Beef, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains beef.

Ingredients

• 500 g beef mince
• 4 saba bananas, or 2 plantains, halved
• 60 g raisins
• 4 eggs
• 1 potato, in small dice
• 1 onion and 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 4 tablespoons oil
• cooked rice, to serve
• 1 teaspoon salt

Method

1. Fry the diced potato until gold and set it aside.
2. Brown the mince hard with the onion and garlic, add the tomato paste and fry it 2 minutes, then the soy sauce and the raisins, and cook 15 minutes until dry rather than saucy.
3. Return the potato to the mince at the end.
4. FRY THE BANANAS SEPARATELY, in their own pan, until caramelised on both cut faces.
5. Fry the eggs separately too, with crisp edges and a soft yolk.
6. NOTHING IS COMBINED IN A PAN. This is a plated dish of four components -- rice, mince, banana, egg -- each cooked on its own and arranged side by side.
7. That separation is the dish. Stirred together it becomes a mince hash with fruit in it, and the point is that the sweet banana and the running yolk meet the savoury mince only on the fork.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes