This is a Cuban recipe I got out of a memoir of 1940s Cuba I read a while back. It's really nice for the current quarantine because the only fresh ingredients it requires are lime juice and parsley, and the latter is optional, and the former can be substituted using this stuff. So with a little planning or online shopping it's your perfect self-isolation shrimp dish.

This is part of my Good First Recipe series, so the cooking instructions are extremely detailed. Don't be put off by that; this is really a super-easy dish that works well as a side dish with beans, rice, and other Latin foods.

The oddball ingredient in this dish is "cracker meal", something you'll find in a lot of mid-century Cuban recipes. While you can locate this in some Latin markets, most folks will buy some generic saltine crackers, and blitz them in a blender or food processor until reduced to crumbs. It takes around 10 saltines to produce the quantity required. If you can't find saltines, then just use boxed breadcrumbs.

Like usual, you should vary the amount of hot sauce based on how spicy you like things.

rummy shrimp

1 lbs to 1 1/2 lbs shrimp, shelled and cleaned
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp to 1 tsp Tabasco, Crystal, or similar vinegar hot sauce
1/2 cup light/white rum
Juice of 1-2 limes, about 1/4 cup
1 Tbs Worchestershire sauce
1 tsp cumin
4 Tbs butter and/or olive oil
4-6 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 to 3/4 cup cracker meal or breadcrumbs
3 Tbs minced parsley

Equipment: non-reactive bowl, ovenproof skillet such as 12" cast iron skillet, stovetop, broiler

Mix together the salt, tabasco, rum, lime juice, Worchestershire, and cumin as a marinade. Put the shrimp in a non-reactive bowl, pour over the marinade, toss them to coat, and then cover. Marinate for at least 1/2 hour, or for up to 2 hours in the fridge (but not overnight, the shrimp will "cook" in that time).

Drain the shrimp, reserving the marinade. Make sure the shrimp is fairly dry, using paper towels if necessary.

Heat the butter and/or oil in an ovenproof pan. Turn on the broiler to low/425F to heat it. Fry the garlic in the oil for around 1 minute, or until the smallest pieces just begin to turn brown. Carefully place the shrimp in a single layer so that they all have contact with the bottom of the pan, and fry for around 1 minute. Pour the marinade over the shrimp, bring to a boil, and boil for a full minute. You do not stir the shrimp for any of this, and the pan contents will still be wet when you are done.

Take the pan off the heat. Sprinkle with the cracker meal/breadcrumbs, making an even layer over the shrimp. Put the pan under the broiler for 3-6 minutes, until the crumbs are crisp and golden -- check it each minute after the third because they can burn quickly. Remove it from the oven and sprinkle with the parsley while still hot.

Serve with plain white rice, and optionally black beans, avocado, or other Cuban foods. Offer hot sauce on the side. Feeds four people as part of a multi-dish meal, or two if you're just having it with rice.

Having finished the appetizers and salad course we moved on to our main course. Now, the super-traditional Christmas eve dinner for Cuban-Americans is Lechon Asado (roast pork shoudler), with rice and black beans, and I had to have all of those things, and you'll see them in a minute.

What you're seeing above, though, is the fish dish, because I may cook pork, but I haven't started eating it, so I wanted some fish for me at least. Now, the recipe I had was for baked grouper with peppers, green onions and cilantro, but grouper isn't a fish you can get on the West Coast so I used sole instead.

Now, I did say beans and rice, didn't I? Yes I did. And in my opinion, there is no better way to eat black beans and rice than to combine them in the form of moros y christianos where the rice and beans are cooked together. Yes, this dish does have the rather insensitive name of "Moors and Christians". It's traditional, deal with it. It's also tasty, and almost a meal in itself.

However, there's still the pork. The pork I spent two and a half days making. You ready?

Now, as you know I don't exactly cook a lot of pork. Heck, I don't cook any, since I don't eat it. So I turned to my Cuban friend Alina for advice, and she helped me out with a recipe for Lechon Asado, the traditional Cuban pork roast.

Alina's recipe lays out for you how to make proper Lechon Asado, so I'm just going to give you my tips and modifications.

First, I only used 5lbs of pork, because that's still a ton of pork and it was more than too much for 8 people. Second, I used a lot more garlic, like two whole heads, so that I could poke 30-40 half-cloves deep into the meat. I had two thoughts here; one was that, well, I like garlic, and the other was that more holes in the pork would help the marinade reach more of the meat.

Now, the traditional marinade that Alina gives you is made from sour orange juice (naranja agria), and while folks offer various substitutes for this, you really don't want to swap it out. Order it online if you don't have a good Latin market in your area. Since the Badia sour orange is a bottled product, it lacked acidity so I added a bit of lemon juice to it. I also used the sour orange juice in the mojo de ajo sauce I made to go with some of the other dishes.

Next, I marinated the pork in a giant plastic bag, which was much easier than trying to fit a roasting pan into the already crowded-fridge, and made it easy to flip the meat over for even marination. Since this was a smaller pork roast, I "only" marinated it for a day and a half. You really need at least a day for this recipe to work, and up to three days is better.

Then roast for 4 hours, let rest, slice, and broil. The guests told me it was fantastic; I had to take their word for it.

Dessert, of course, was proper flan. Because what else would you make with a Cuban meal? We did have a bit of a start because the caramel in the bottom of the flan cups crystallized, but that actually turned out not to matter at all. It re-caramelized in the oven.

So that was last year's Cuban Christmas eve. Hopefully it inspired you to try something a bit more adventurous for your own holiday meals.

As for this year ... I'm doing Belgian food. Watch this feed for that!

In the last few years, it's become my responsibility to feed family and Southern Oregon friends Christmas Eve dinner, and then we go to a friend's house for Christmas day.

Yes, Christmas. My sweetie's family isn't Jewish, and I'm fine cooking for the holiday because, after all, my real religion is Feastitarianism*. There's also gonna be pork in this blog post, so be prepared.

Anyway, we have a couple special diets in the group, including one person who is allergic to fish and another one who has celiac. This has meant being fairly creative, especially since I still prefer doing ethnically themed meals. So last year, I chose Cuban food, and I'm posting this before Christmas in case you want a Cuban Christmas too. And you should! It's so colorful, and so tasty!

First course was appetizers, and if it's Cuban or Puerto Rican food you know we're going to have tostones. These are a delicious fritter made with green plantains, bought when they're hard and starchy and you have to peel them with a knife.

tostones

• 2-4 green plantains
• 2 cups peanut oil
• salt

Peel the plantains, then cut them into 2-3" chunks (for large tostones) or 1-2" pieces (for small ones). Heat half the peanut oil in a large, deep pan to low frying heat (300-325F) and shallow-fry them, turning them with tongs, until the chunks are brown on all sides. This will take around 10-12 minutes per batch; cook multiple batches rather than crowding them.

Drain the fried plantain and let it cool to room temperature. Then mash them flat, thin as you can make them (I use a tortilla press). Turn up the heat on the oil (350-380F) and fry them in batches until crisp drain them, blot dry, and salt them while they're still hot.

Of course, with the tostones I had to serve some sauces: mojo de ajo sauce and banana ketchup.

Now, I mentioned the gluten-free nature of the dinner, which led to some experiments -- such as these cheese empanadas, made with cassava flour dough. These are technically Dominican cuisine rather than Cuban, but they were perfect for the meal.

I experimented both with frozen cassava pulp, and with flour, and found the flour much easier to work with, so that's what I recommend. They fried up beautifully, and the cassava dough was light and airy, almost like some kind of puff instead of dough. I'd make these again even if I wasn't serving a gluten-free meal.

Now, on to the salad course:

Every year my dad, who lives in South Texas, sends me a box of the amazing ruby-red grapefruit they grow there for Hanukkah. So of course I needed to make a grapefruit salad! This one has butter lettuce, sweet onions, and cucumbers.

Now, as far as my sweetie is concerned one of the main reasons to eat Cuban is to have an avocado salad. This is a classic one, with sliced avocados, hothouse tomatoes, and a garlic, olive oil, and fresh oregano dressing.

That's enough for today. Tommorrow we'll get into the main course, and The Pork That Cooked For Two Days.

(* Feastitarianism: you belong to whatever religion is currently having a feast day, today)