Cuban Archives | The Good Hearted Woman

My Super Easy Super Bowl Party Menu

A different kind of Super Bowl Round-up {plus my 15-minute recipe for Cuban Black Bean Dip}.

This week, Super Bowl party food round-ups are popping up on food blogs like whack-a-moles at a carnival, but trust me – this one is different.

How is this one different? Because this is not a collection of recipes randomly chosen for their beautiful pictures or festive presentations – these are the foods that you will actually find being served up at my house this Sunday. (If the menu looks slim, don’t worry – we are having a pot luck, so there will be plenty of food a’comin’!)

I decided to focus my menu (very, very loosely) on a Cuban/Caribbean theme because it is super easy to prepare, lasts some time on the counter without refrigeration, and tastes fabulous at any temperature. I estimate the entire menu, start to finish, will take me no more than 1 1/2-2 hours of hands-on preparation time.

Here’s what I’m serving:

Cuban Sandwich Sliders {from Recipe for Perfection}
Tailgate Peach BBQ Sliders {from Sweet Tea Sweetie}
Caribbean Mango Salad
Cuban Black Bean Dip (Recipe below)
Mr. B’s Awesome Homemade Guacamole
Homemade Pico de Gallo
Corn Chips

In addition to the usual beverages, specialty drinks will include:

Homemade Ginger Ale {non-alcoholic}
Mr. B’s Whiskey Ginger

If you use canned beans, you can whip up this Cuban-Style Black Bean Dip in just a few minutes.

My Super Easy Super Bowl Party Menu | The Good Hearted Woman

Cuban Black Bean Dip

Course Snack

Ingredients

1 tablespoon unrefined coconut oil
1/2 large onion chopped
1/2 red pepper chopped
2 cloves garlic minced
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon sugar
15 oz black beans drained and rinsed
1/4 cup vegetable broth plus a little extra
1-2 teaspoons lime juice
salt & pepper to taste

Instructions

In a medium skillet over medium heat, saute onion and red pepper in olive oil until tender.
Add garlic and saute another minute.
Add cumin, sugar, vegetable broth, and beans and simmer until most of the liquid has been absorbed. Remove from heat.
Stir in lime juice.
Use a large mortar and pestle for this next step. Simply pour everything into the mortar bowl and use the pestle to mash it all together until it is creamy but still chunky. Add a little extra vegetable stock if necessary. Garnish with sliced limes and cilantro.

Cuban Black Bean DIp | The Good Hearted Woman

I call this one “Cat Uncropped #328.” (This is for all of my food blogger friends who have been here, done this.)

Homemade Flour Tortillas

June 30 By Renée ♥ 12 Comments

It’s been nearly twenty years since I had homemade tortillas for the first time, and the memory is as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. I watched fascinated as our cousin Leah, the daughter of long-time missionaries born and raised in Mexico, rolled out one tortilla after another, flour motes dancing with each turn of her pin. In well-practiced rhythm, she rolled, flipped, turned, and fried each one with machine-like consistency, quickly building a stack of warm, floury flat-breads tall enough to feed our small army of children. Soft, flavorful and tender, Leah’s tortillas made nearly every tortilla I’d eaten up until then taste like flattened papier-mâché. Watching her work was a moment of pure grace, and I remember feeling immense gratitude for her efforts.

If you have never made homemade tortillas, it’s high time that you do. And once you do, you will never go back to store-bought. (OK, maybe you will sometimes, for the convenience, but after these, those store-bought tortillas will never taste the same again.) But here’s the biggest secret of all: homemade flour tortillas are surprisingly fast and easy to make!

My flour tortilla recipe is an adaptation of “Flour Tortillas Diaz.” I love that it doesn’t call for lard or shortening, and the tortillas it makes are soft and pliable even after they have been sitting for some time.

Homemade Flour Tortillas

Course Bread

Prep Time 40 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 1 hour

Author Renée B. ♥ The Good Hearted Woman

Ingredients

4 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons Kosher salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 cups warm water not HOT

Instructions

Mix together flour, salt and baking powder. Drizzle in the olive oil and mix with your hands.
Mix in a little water at a time with your hands until you have a soft dough. (The dough should be soft but not sticky. You can always add more flour if you need to.) Knead the dough for about 5 minutes, adding flour as needed if the dough gets sticky.
Form the dough into a ball and wrap in plastic or cover with a towel. Let rest for about 20 minutes. (This allows to gluten to rest.)
Divide dough into 2” balls (about the size of a golf ball). Flatten a dough ball with your palm and dust each side with flour, then roll into a 5-6” circle. Turn and flip each tortilla a few times as you roll them out. [See note]
Heat a frying pan or griddle over medium heat. Do not grease or spray with cooking spray. Place a tortilla in the pan and cook until it bubbles a little – around 20-30 seconds. Flip it and cook the other side 20-30 seconds.
Place cooked tortillas in a tortilla warmer, or inside a folded kitchen towel. The steam from the hot tortillas softens them.

Recipe Notes

It takes about the same amount of time to roll out a tortilla as it does for to fry one, so after you roll the first few, it is easy to get into a rhythm of cooking one and rolling the next at the same time.

Want to make an awesome tortilla warmer like the one in the picture above? Check out my tutorial here!

El Cubo de Cuba {SE Portland – Hawthorne}

April 23 By Renée ♥ 2 Comments

We might have never stopped at El Cubo de Cuba if it weren’t for my mother’s broken shoulder. We had just gotten done visiting her in rehab, and were on our way to a weekend getaway in the Gorge. But Southeast Portland is a long way from Hood River when you are hungry, so we stopped at the first place we saw that looked interesting – a bright little corner on the westerly end of Hawthorne where parking is miraculously plentiful – El Cubo de Cuba. It has been nearly forever since Mr. B and I have tried out a new place without first consulting Yelp or UrbanSpoon or one of our foodie friends. All can say about that is, let’s hear it for doing things the old-fashioned way.

The first thing that hits you walking through the door is the décor. Bright, colorful walls are literally covered with hand-written messages – congratulations to the owners, menu advice, even a warning or two over the exit door. The feel of the place is casual and homey, and the environment is very inviting.

El Cubo de Cuba is another Portland Food cart gone brick-n-mortar. The menu reflects its roots: simple and straightforward, and the atmosphere casual to a fault – just a click away from food cart etiquette. After perusing the menu, you order at the kitchen window counter and when you’re finished eating, you bus your own table. Service was fast, and the staff was friendly and very helpful.

The food at El Cubo de Cuba is, in a word, Comfortable.

Nothing we ordered stood out proclaiming, “Yes! This is the best [insert Cuban favorite here] I’ve ever eaten and I must eat this every night for the rest of my life.” On the other hand, having now eaten there on three separate occasions, I can say that the offerings are solidly, consistently good and very satisfying.

The menu includes a simple selection of rice bowls, plates, and sandwiches, each offering up to three choices of meat and a vegetarian option. Mr. B and I shared the Mojo Pork Plate. Our plate came with Cuban Black Beans and a choice of yellow, brown or white rice (we opted for brown). We also ordered a Caribbean Salad, which turned out to be a great choice – the mango, cucumber, red onion and avocado paired extremely well with the Mojo Pork. The Mojo Pork, a slow roasted, locally sourced pork shoulder, arrived lean, tender and succulent, and we were both very impressed with the sweet, savory flavors that the accompanying citrus mojo sauce imparted to it.

The black beans were very mildly spiced – maybe even bordering on bland, but not in a bad way, if that makes any sense. I guess I was expecting something with a bit more punch, but Mr. B and I are both fans of spicy food, and have come to expect that sometimes you have to tone things down for the masses. After all, it is so much easier to add spice to something then take it out, right? In the case of the black beans, it was nothing a shake or two of hot sauce and a squirt of lime couldn’t remedy.

El Cubo de Cuba also sports a decent beverage menu that includes a variety of rum cocktails, wine and sangria, beer, espresso, and a number of non-alcoholic options beyond the expected soda, coffee and juice.

Finally, this review wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t share a little peek inside the “facilities” and these photographs that were hanging on the walls. I was so intrigued and touched by these faces. They got me to thinking about Cuban politics and what relatively little I know of them – and how my generation and the ones that have followed have never known a world with a free Cuba. Here is Oregon, Cuba seems a world away, when in reality it is only 90 miles from the US Borders of the Florida coastline – the same distance from 31st & Hawthorne to The Dalles. These images made me consider those Cuban people with more depth than I have in a long time. That’s a lot to get out of a short trip to the bathroom, so I think it’s worth noting.

Overall, if you are in Southeast Portland and looking for a good plate of savory comfort with a side of mango and lime, look no farther than the corner of 31th and Hawthorne, right under the big blue sign.

El Cubo de Cuba
3106 SE Hawthorne, Portland, Oregon.
Winter hours
Sunday through Thursday, 11:30am – 9:00 pm,
Friday & Saturday, 11:30 am – 10:00 pm
Closed Mondays
Happy Hour 3 – 6 pm Daily
Hours are extended in summer