hungry sofia

A couple of years ago, I found a recipe for eggs baked in brioche that I decided to make for Mother’s Day.  It went over better than I’d hoped since it reminded my Mom of a breakfast she’d loved as a little girl in Cuba.  Not having had it since then, she vaguely remembered ham and béchamel sauce added to eggs baked in rolls called cemitas.  I was especially curious since I’d always thought of traditional Cuban breakfast as pressed pan cubano and cafe con leche.  A few weeks ago, a friend lent me her copy of the book Cuban Cookery by Blanche Z. De Baralt.  An American who lived in Europe and studied at Packer Collegiate, a few blocks away from where I live now, she moved to Havana at the turn of the century  with her husband, a Cuban doctor.  Published in 1931, I fell in love with the combination of her Edith Wharton English with her use of “our” and “we” to describe traditional Cuban food.  She’d clearly gone native, and I liked her that much more for it.  When I found her notes on Huevos en Cemitas or Eggs in Rolls – a  hollowed out breakfast roll filled with chopped meat, petits pois, and cream sauce topped with a raw egg and baked till set – I knew I’d found my mother’s missing recipe. Continue reading ‘Huevos en Cemitas’