Vegetarian recipes from Cuba

Cuban cooking without meat rests on rice, black beans, cassava and malanga, with plantain at every stage of ripeness. The aromatic base is sofrito — onion, green pepper, garlic, cumin, oregano and bay leaf softened in oil — and it turns up almost everywhere. Moros y cristianos is the pivot dish: rice and black beans cooked together in the bean liquor, which colours the grain and loads it with flavour. It is a dish in its own right, not a side.

Around it, frying does the rest of the meal. Plantain is handled by ripeness: green and twice-flattened for savoury tachinos, ripe and caramelised for fried platanos maduros, which supply the sweetness of the plate. The roots follow the same route: grated malanga becomes the fritters frituras de malanga, and boiled cassava goes under yuca con mojo, a sauce of crushed garlic, hot oil and sour citrus juice. Acid and garlic are the counterweight to all that frying.