Wednesday, March 16, 2011

ECONOMICAL COMFORT FOOD - BING'S ARROZ A LA CUBANA

This is my version of a family dish I used to like called Arroz a la Cubana.  Maybe the dish was called as such because the sauteed beef is a recipe taken from a Cuban dish.

For my version, I used:

2 TB of olive oil (First Press)
1 lb of hormone and anti-biotic free ground beef
1/2 an onion chopped or minced
3 cloves of garlic minced
1 tomato chopped
1/4 cup large raisins
salt/pepper to season
(May also add any packet flavoring mix to your meat mixture)*
3 eggs
Fresh cooked rice (to measure 3 cups when cooked)
steamed broccoli

In a wok, saute your onions and garlic together till translucent; then add the tomatoes till turning limp.  Add in your ground beef.  While half way done, add the raisins and continue to saute.  Turn the heat really low and continue to cook while the juice softens the dried raisins.  Season with salt and pepper and for extra zing, half a packet of any dried seasoning mix.  *In my case, I had a packet of seasoning for a chicken-vegetable dish I brought back from Argentina called "Caldo para Saborizar de Verduras" by Knorr.  But don't worry, even without it, is OK.



Your meat mixture should look like this once cooked
Once you are ready, cook your eggs (sunny side my way - see older post).
Get a cup and run under water to moisten the inside.
Scoop hot cooked rice into cup and press with the back of a spoon.  Unmold it onto your plate.
Dish out 1/3 of the meat mixture by the side of the scooped rice and lay some brocolli on the other side.
Lay the cooked egg on top of the meat.

Now, dinner is served.

A closeup shot of the dish shows that I mixed some saffron rice with the white rice.  I had some saffron rice from the night before but not enough for all the 3 servings, so I decided to use it as decoration for this meal.

Some could consider this as another Brunch meal!


1 comment:

Greg said...

I remember you serving this meal to us when we were younger. It was delicious!