http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/dining/restaurant-hopping-with-the-author-of-the-cuban-table.html 2014-10-30 21:27:52 Restaurant-Hopping With the Author of ‘The Cuban Table’ A yen for authenticity: visiting Cuban restaurants with Ana Sofía Peláez, the daughter of Cuban immigrants and author of the new cookbook “The Cuban Table.” === AS a child, I was fascinated by Cuba, imagining it was something like the block past the one I was allowed to walk to alone. With all those missiles, boats and beards, it seemed exotic and vaguely threatening. Then, of course, it became the place where Fredo sealed his fate in “The Godfather, Part II.” “I know it was you, Fredo,” Al Pacino incants, after pressing the kiss of Judas on John Cazale’s lips. “You broke my heart.” Cuba, like Fredo, has been breaking hearts for decades now. Its haunting mystique is what drew me to “ We were sitting in On our table were a croqueta preparada — a Cuban sandwich with croquettes — and an Elena Ruz sandwich, pronounced Ruth, which is how it is spelled on this menu. Named for a Cuban socialite, it is a curious combination, recounted in Ms. Pelaez’s book, of turkey, cream cheese and strawberry jelly. As a New Yorker, I find it hard to argue with cream cheese no matter where I find it. But Pilar added Swiss, and instead of the traditional white roll, used multigrain bread. Ms. Pelaez, who has been writing the Cuban food blog Hungry Sofía since 2008, shook her head sadly. “This doesn’t —” she made a pinching gesture, meaning the ingredients didn’t properly meld. But the Cuban sandwich was a hit. “When we talk about Cuban sandwiches, we talk about the right bread,” she said. “It should be airy, so when it goes under the iron, it gives way right away. There should be one light layer of crunch, what they call the eggshell. The croquetas add a creaminess, and also, you get more ham. In New York, so many places put chipotle mayonnaise on a Cuban sandwich, but then you can’t taste anything in it. Only yellow mustard has the sharpness to go with the pickle, cheese and ham.” Does that mean French’s? She nodded. “These days we like to question everything, but some things we already have the answer to.” Ms. Pelaez remembers her paternal grandparents, who left Cuba in the early 1960s, most fondly. “The initial thinking was, ‘Let’s get the kids out of here until this calms down,’ ” she recalled. “No one thought it would last forever. After the She has visited Cuba twice, first in 2000 and then in 2013 to research her book. “It’s unnatural,” she said. “The rest of the world is moving at warp speed with the Internet and globalization, but the people there are not engaged. It’s heartbreaking. There is so much human capital in a state of suspended animation.” Ms. Peláez’s father, an airline pilot, died in 1984. Her mother, Alicia, is a broker for a private shipping company and still lives in Miami. Since Ms. Peláez graduated from Barnard in 1997, she has lived with her sister, Carmen, a filmmaker, in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. She worked as an assistant at the Museum for African Art (now the Africa Center) before spending years as a production coordinator in film. Galvanized by her grandparents’ recipes, she started cooking between film projects. She is a self-contained woman whose intelligence is matched by her passion for her subject; when she discussed Cuban desserts, I thought she might get up and dance. We arrived at By then I was savoring my ropa vieja, in spite of its slight sweetness. “The red pepper and tomato simmers a long time and caramelizes,” Ms. Peláez said, putting her fork in. “I don’t know if I detect a sweetness, but I always had a non-Cuban try my recipes for the book. Even in the black beans, we add a spoonful of sugar at the end.” She smiled. “It’s a sugar country.” Suitably inspired, I switched to dessert. Where had this flan been all my life? It was spectacular. She agreed. “I feel strongly that Cubans do flan better than anyone,” Ms. Peláez said. “And here, they push the caramel to its darkest point. It’s rich but light.” For her next book, Ms. Peláez — unsurprisingly — wants to focus on Cuban desserts. “Every woman I spoke to had a family recipe,” she said. “Desserts were a woman’s calling card, what your mother taught you to make. The lady of the house always went into the kitchen to make the dessert.” By the time we got to Ms. Peláez did not approve of the frita, however. A Cuban burger, it is traditionally topped with a special sauce and shoestring potatoes. This one channeled White Castle. She regarded it glumly. “No shoestring, no sauce, no reason,” she concluded. The mojitos compensated. “When I was growing up, we used to toast, ‘Next year in Cuba,’ ” she recalled. “When I’m in New York, I miss Miami, and when I’m in Miami, I miss New York. In Havana, it’s the perfect combination. You see only the bones, but you get a sense of what it was. You’re at a café, they play a song your grandparents sang, and you fight tears. But you’re there either alone or surrounded by tourists. You want to see other Cubans and you don’t. You feel like someone’s going to walk in the door, but they’re not. “There is always the sense of the life you would have had. But my grandparents thought of their children and their children’s children. I feel a sense of peace toward the Cuba they gave me. They made the right choice.”