Cuban Picadillo and Mexican Rice

A few years ago, my husband and I went to a culinary school in Manhattan to take a class for Cuban dishes. One of our friends gave this as a gift. (Here is the post of the Cuban Surf and Turf class)

In that class, we learned many dishes but one of our favorite dish was Picadillo. We made this dish many times after the class and every time we make it, we think about the cooking class we took together. I think this is a great gift for a couple or friends or family who love cooking.

Anyways, because of the Hurricane Sandy, we lost most of our stuff and the recipe for all the cuban dish we learned that day was one of the things we lost.

So, I looked some picadillo recipe online and found a one I might like and tried.
It was great and I love it! I found the recipe in All Recipes website. (Click here for the recipe I used)

I used the Le Creuset which I bought at the end of last year. It is wonderful. The recipe is for big portion but I was having friends over and stuff so this worked out perfect this time.

Picadillo is a tomato based ground beef dish with olives, capers and spices like cinnamon and cloves. This one also has some vinegar in it which I really like. I didn't like olive before but ever since I start making this dish, I started to like olives in some dishes. I still don't love it just like that but I think it is great in small amount with some other ingredients.

Also, even though the recipe didn't call for it but we added lots of cilantro at the end. I think this made it even better for us since we love cilantro.

We made this also on Thanksgiving last year at our friends house and everyone loved it. Our friend wanted to learn how to make this since he had a potluck party in his work. So we made it together again and he brought it to the office. It was a great success!

My son like this dish also.

For rice, we made Mexican rice which has onion, tomato sauce and some spices like cumin. I also used some chicken stock which I made the other day.

Picadillo is becoming one of our signature dish to make. We normally make Tostones when we make picadillo but I think tostones is quite a lot of work so I didn't make it this time. But Tostones is also a great dish to make. I love hot crispy Tostones!!

Well, we are very thankful for the friends who gave this gift to us!!!

If you want to try something different and if you like olive, caper and tangy flavor, you should try this Picadillo.

Dinner with a friend

The other day, we invited one of our friend for dinner. We wanted to meet up with her earlier but it had been already over a year since we last met. She is very busy and she is always helping others and very positive person. There are lots of things which I should learn from her. Anyway, even though she is a great cook and we love her food, since we wanted her to relax a little bit so we decided to invite her and make some dinner.

This was also first time for her to meet our son. She brought many gifts for him and also for me!

I made chicken enchilada again! This is the dish which our friends who came to visit us from South Africa made the other day. It is still not as good as his chicken enchilada but it was quite good.

I also made some rice which I learned in a Cuban cooking class a few years ago. (Click here for that post)
This was somehow watery and was not a success but my friend liked both of the dishes :-)

We talked about lots of things. It was really nice to have a nice dinner with her.

She is such a great cook and she cooked many great dishes for us in the past. I love learning new dishes from her so we promised to each other to cook together again sometime soon. Here is the link for the post of Shrimp Biryani which I learned from her and tried. 


For dessert, I made strawberry tart. I made tart crust and then add custard cream and whipped cream and topped with some strawberries. This was easy but really good. I know I will be making this again.
It also look pretty isn't it?

It was so nice to have her over for dinner. We definitely should do this again very soon. Next time, I am looking forward to learn new Pakistani dish :-) Can't wait!

Cuban lunch with our landlord

We have meal with our landlord a few times a year and we wanted to have one last get together before this year ends. So we invited over our landlord for lunch. We decided to make Cuabn food which we leanred the other day at the cooking class.

Our menu was Picadillo, Yellow rice and tostones.

Since my husband team learned how to make picadillo, we decided that he will be in charge of Picadillo and I will be in charge of Rice and Tostones.

Ground pork was sold out at the super market so we had to grind on our own.

This is the Picadillo my husband made.

It had olives, rasins, bell peppers, almond and some other vegetables and it taste so good! I like the crunch from the almond.

This is the rice I made.

This actually came out better than I thoguht and I love this rice. I will be making this more often.

And this is Tostones.

I think Toastones took longer than other dishes becuase you have to fry them once.

Then, smash them.

Then fry them again until it is crispy.

Everything came out great and our landlord liked them a lot.

We had a great time together. They are so nice and funny. Their story always make me laugh so much. I really like them and we feel very lucky to have such a wonderful landlord.

They brought very rich Chocolate cake and we had it after lunch.

We are very happy with the Cuban food we made and we will be making more of these food in the future, I think. I am glad that we learned something really good at the cooking class. It was fun to cook with my husband :-)

Cuban Surf-n-Turf Cooking Class

One of our (my husband and I) friend gave us this wonderful gift of attending a cooking class so my husband and I went to have a cooking class together on Saturday night in Manhattan.

It was at The institute of Culinary Education and our class was "Cuban Surf-n-Turf". Since I had never taken any cooking class so I was a bit nervous but this was a recreational class so I was more excited than nervous and looking forward to learn some Cuban dishes.

To my surprise, there were many couples and friends and so on and we started by introducing ourselves a little bit. Some people were there because they got this as a wedding gift, some people were there to celebrate friend's birthday, some people were interested in learning Cuban food. There were about 15 people in the class and everybody was really nice and fun.

The class was a bit different from what I expected. We made 11 different things in about 3 hours. So we divide the class into 3 teams and each team made different things from these 11 menus. My husband I decided to split up into different teams so we can learn different dishes.

My team was in charge of "Sea bass in sofrito", "Yucca al Mojo", "Tostones" and "Flan". Each team had each separate table so after we start cooking, I did not really talk to my husband until the end of cooking. I heard his laugh but I was so busy with my dishes I did not have time to talk to him. In the beginning, we decided who will be in charge of what. I was in charge of the fish and tostones with one other person. I think our team worked pretty well. I was worried if we can finish everything in 3 hours but I also had fun cooking with other people.

In a way, it felt little bit like a competition like the one you see on TV. I mean it was more relaxed and fun but at the same time, everybody is running around getting ingredients and chopping thing away. It was very interesting.

At the end of cooking, we assembled all the dishes into one table and enjoyed our meal with mojito and wine. Everybody was enjoying each other's company and joking around while we ate.

Here are the photos of the dishes we made that night.

Mojito

Ceviche

Ropa Vieja

Pescado Enchilado

Before

After

Picadillo a la Habanera

Frijoles Negros

Arroz Amarillo

Yucca al Mojo

Tostones

Ensalada de aguacate y Pimento

Flan de Leche

It was great to learn some Cuban food because I like Cuban food and I go to Cuban restaurant sometimes but I never really cooked Cuban food myself. My favorite dish of the night was Tostones which is a fried plantains. I like it more may be because I was involved in making this. It is quite time consuming (you have to double fry the plantains) but the result was crispy salty good tostones! I loved it! and now I know how to make them :-)

My husband and I had a great time. We talked about the class and what happened in each team all the way home and laughed a lot. This was a wonderful gift. We really appreciate our friend who gave this gift to us. Thanks!!!

Delicious Cuban Food

Hello! I went to have dinner with my friend last night. 

Since I was watching a movie about "Che Guevara the night before, I felt like eating Cuban food. So we went to this Cuban restaurant called "Havana NY". 

This was my first time going to this restaurant but I like it very much. The food was good and not too expensive and the service was also good. 

First we had Fried Yuca fingers for appetizer. This came with pretty strong garlic oil. Garlic oil might have been a bit too strong but the fried Yuca was really good! 

Then, I had grilled skirt stake for the main course. (This was one of the recommendation from the waiter). Look at this huge portion! It comes with rice and beans but I don't like beans too much so I substitute beans for salad.  This was also pretty good. I love the Chimichurri sauce which came with this stake. I need to learn how to make this Chimichurri sauce. 

For dessert, we shared "Coconut Flan" but I forgot to take picture... 

Over all, it was really good and I had a great time with my friend, talking for hours. My friends make me laugh and makes me feel happy. I am very fortunate to have friends who are awesome. 

Also, I love eating out. It gives me many inspirations for my cooking. I love trying different kind of food from different countries. Normally, when I travel somewhere, first thing I think about is what is good to eat there. It sounds like all I think about it food but that's what makes me happy. To think about food and what I can cook next!