1931 Cuban Cookery by Blanche Z de Baralt

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is excellent, being more delicate in flavor and more tender than in the North. Sugar, the formost national product, plays a great part' in Cuban food: sweets are perhaps too preponderant. But one should not forget that it is better for the organism in the tropics to get its calories from sugar than from meat. In fact, a great specialist once told me that the popular "pan con timba" (a slang expression to denote a roll containing a slice of guava paste, a makeshift for a meal for the poor and– often the consolation of hungry street urchins, to be obtained for two cents at any bodega), was an ideal combination, as it contains cereals, sugar and fruit, a perfectly balanced food product, better for the native, probably, than a beefsteak, and quite as nourishing. Rice is, in a measure, the staff of life down here. We eat almost as much of it as Orientals do, and know how to prepare it. Rice appears on creole tables, rich or poor, twice a da'.y and largely substitutes bread, without excluding it. To prepare rice, like coffee, is simple enough yet most difficult to accomplish to perfection. White rice-of course– should be well cooked, and tender, each