Breakfast/Brunch | hungry sofia

Feb 5

Picking Peppers

I’m not used to very much heat in my food. Though most people associate chili peppers with Latin America, food in the Caribbean is more often spicy than hot. While I love having a choice on one menu between caipirinhas and mojitos or lomo saltado and carne asada, trendy pan-Latin restaurants can add to the confusion. Friends insist that chipotle belongs in a Cuban sandwich, and ask me if I had elotes covered in chili powder growing up because they ordered it at Habana Outpost. The answers are complicated. I don’t want chipotle anywhere near my Cubano, but I look forward to my chili covered corn every summer (though not because I had it growing up, but because it’s so good).

Pan de Yuca

Though I’d love to have homemade rolls every day, I stay away from bread recipes for first thing. They never seem to rise and bulk up in the time promised. I wake up early and spend the morning nervously peeking at the dough I lovingly covered in its blanky and placed in a draft free place to no avail. One hour becomes two and there’s no breakfast in sight. By the time it’s done, I’m too cranky to really enjoy it. I didn’t get to sleep in yet the dough enjoyed a leisurely rise. When I came across pan de yuca or yuca bread in a Miami, I was curious. A combination of yuca flour (also known as tapioca starch) and cheese, it can be mixed and rolled as quickly as arepas then baked off. Read more

Nov 23

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Holiday Nesting

Its bothered me for awhile that I haven’t included more Puerto Rican recipes. There are so many similarities with Cuban food, that I dip towards the more familiar Cuban side when in doubt, like a bird flying with one wing. Recently, I found a copy of Carmen Aboy Valldejuli’s classic, Puerto Rican Cookery, which I hope will restore the balance. There are many reasons to love this book. To name a few, words like carefully and thoroughly are in bold making the recipes more emotional while delicioso and sabroso are translated to”Caribbean” when no other word will do; Rafael Tufiño contributed illustrations; and there’s a sweet black and white picture of her husband, Luis Valldjuli serving her a rum drink from the chapter he contributed on the back cover. Read more

Nov 20

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Snow Days

Though it’s typically full, it’s rare to see a line outside of Versailles restaurant in Miami. It’s only on the rare cold night that it actually reaches capacity, especially when there’s a run on churros. Any day that dips below 65 becomes an impromptu holiday in a summer town, a Miami snow day of sprinkled sugar and fried dough. The lines form and the usual late night orders for medianoches and mariquitas become churros and hot chocolate.

I think it’s the special occasion quality I associate with churros that keeps me from buying them in New York (though I’d never pass them up in Madrid – I’m not crazy). Yesterday, deciding I needed a little Christmas now, I brought out the churrera, that my mother who hates to cook but loves kitchen gadgets sent, and my Read more

Nov 15

Sunday Mornings

I thought I left behind my Saturday cartoon habit in elementary school but realized it’d just morphed into my early Sunday morning movie ritual. I do try to sleep in like everyone else but it’s impossible to explain to my two yorkies why they should let me on this one day of the week (either they don’t want to learn or they can’t learn). Not that I mind too much since it’s the only day I don’t feel obligated to check the weather, headlines or facebook first thing. Cafe con leche and TCM is like cake for breakfast. It doesn’t even have to be particularly good, as long as it’s black and white and has that low crackle soundtrack of sizzling bacon. Maybe I never got Dorothy opening the the sepia door to Oz, but its become my own way to test the waters for the week ahead. A Thin Man movie, it’s going to be a good week. Destry Rides Again, could be trouble. Fred and Ginger, might be s’marvelous.

Nov 5

Causa Caliente

I’ve been wanting to try this second causa recipe, stuffed with chicken for awhile. I was finally got my hands on bottled ají amarillo, the Peruvian peppers that are key to so many recipes but are difficult to find in New York. Though usually served cold, roast chicken wrapped in yellow potatoes then slathered with cheese and lightly browned, seemed like the perfect early fall comfort food. I’m always a little skeptical that it’s going to work, but the pureed potatoes combined with oil and peppers become a perfect kind of molding clay so the only difficult part is stopping yourself from playing with it incessantly so it has time to chill.

The Running People

“They seemed to move with the ground,” said one awestruck spectator. “Kind of like a cloud, or a fog moving across the mountains.”

This time, the Tarahumara weren’t two lonely tribesmen adrift in a sea of Olympians…they were locked in formation they’d practiced since childhood, with wily old vets up front and eager young buck pushing from behind. They were sure-footed and sure of themselves. They were the Running People.

-Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

If anyone has read Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run, they know what it’s like to have images of Mexico’s Tarahumara racing through their minds. A story about “a hidden tribe, superathletes, and the greatest race the world has never seen,” it’s really about all of us and none of us. A story of our evolution and ability as runners that may be largely lost, except to a few who never forgot how. Read more

Oct 4

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Cold Nights

He turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his chocolate. The mellow November sun came streaming into the room. The sky was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was almost like a morning in May.

– Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

There are always a few weeks in early Fall where it is colder in my apartment then it is outside. I leave the house ready to face a brisk New York, early frost and find a mild northern California day instead. While the season makes up it’s mind, I’ll just live in a bowl of hot chocolate. Read more

Aug 29

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Pan y Chocolate

Since August has been more hectic than I’d planned, I’ve been enjoying my own kitchen vacation this week. With family visiting, I’ve avoided my usual pitfall of putting together an over ambitious meal with only a 50/50 chance of success. This morning I kept it simple. I found a Catalan recipe in Anya Von Bremzen’s The New Spanish Table for toast with chocolate and olive oil. Just a baguette brushed with olive oil then toasted or broiled for a couple of minutes till golden, covered with melted dark chocolate then sprinkled with Maldon sea salt. With only a few basic ingredients, I can dwell on which chocolate to use or whether my olive oil is sufficiently “fruity”. An easy lesson learned, and something to remember the next time I’m elbow deep in the kitchen. Read more

Aug 18

Huevos en Cemitas

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. Read more