You can prepare this simple-yet-elegant chicken dish the night before, when no children are around to chuck stuffed animals at you, or crab crawl in your path, or shout odd phrases like “Banana juice!” at you. So peaceful, so quiet. Just you and the chicken in the kitchen.
Brown bean soup was my favorite bean soup growing up, and to this day it’s still comforting to me. It’s an easy soup to make well. For the adventurous cook, these beans are a blank canvas. You can do so much with them.
We are seriously living in strange times. I recently had to venture out of the house to make a much needed trip to the grocery store. Barren shelves. Face masks. Vinyl gloves. Going to the grocery store without my 3 kids in tow used to feel like such a luxurious experience. Now, I’m trying to get in and out as quickly as possible, trying not to touch anyone or anything other than the few items the store managed to restock since people lost their minds and snatched up all the toilet paper. But I was able to find ground beef, so looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!
Here comes another quintessentially Cuban dish: Meat and Potatoes! No seriously, that’s the name. Carne con Papas sounds like it could be anything that involves meat and potatoes, but it’s actually a pretty specific dish recognizable to Cubans and Cuban Americans like me, and lots of families have their own variations on how to cook it. It’s a tomato-based beef stew with quartered potatoes, served over a plate of white rice.