It is one of those products which, along with the cooking banana, is inextricably linked, in the collective imagination of this island, with times of the most extreme penury
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 27 October 2024 – In the 1995 film Madagascar, directed by Fernando Pérez, around a dinner table, a family of “vegetable eaters” creates, out of the act of chewing, a physical and aural embodiment of the difficult years of Cuba’s ’Special Period’. The sound of crunch, crunch, crunch dominates the scene in which the characters seem trapped inside a hunger which forces them to eat only leaf vegetables every day, with nothing else as accompaniment. It would cost much more to reshoot that scene now, in these times of inflation and shortage.
Cabbage is one of those products which, along with the cooking banana, is inextricably linked, in the collective imagination of this island, with times of the most extreme penury. Resistant to the damaging effects of transport, easy to store and capable of filling several plates from one single item, it has as many admirers as it has critics. The majority of those who keep it away from their table tend to be people who are marked by the trauma of an infancy or adolescence in which Mrs Cabbage was all too often present.
“I was a pre-university student for three years in Güira de Melena and they gave us cabbage for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day”, jokes Lázaro, who, at 51 administrates a small fruit and veg stall near Calle Carlos III in central Havana. “I don’t eat it anymore, I can’t even bear the smell, but thanks to cabbage I can at least feed my family”, he says, pointing to some cabbages still enveloped in their dark green outer leaves.
“I was a pre-university student for three years in Güira de Melena and they gave us cabbage for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day”
“I sell them individually and on some days they’re the best quality but on others they arrive a little bit bruised because, although they’re a hardy product it’s best to transport them in boxes so they don’t get as knocked about or damaged”, he says. Most of the ones he sells are from the San Antonio de los Baños municipality, in Artemisa, where he has contacts “with a peasant farmer who harvests a little bit of everything”.
When a customer leaves Lázaro’s stall with a cabbage in his shopping bag, it is then that begins the new life of the vegetable which is later transformed according to who is to cook with it and the ingredients which are to be added. It may end up being just some rough dry strips on a prisoner’s tray, or, some thin strands spiced up and sprinkled with olive oil on a plate in a luxury restaurant. One’s expertise with a kitchen knife and the spices one has to hand can elevate it from the mediocre.
“The trick with cabbage is to peel off the leaves one by one”, says Julia, 81, who worked for years in a canteen based on the now defunct Cuban Fishing Fleet. “On the days when it was my turn to cook nobody left any cabbage on their plate, they ate it all up because I knew how to cut it, unlike my colleagues who just hacked away at it, producing only thick, hard pieces, which no one wanted to eat”.
Julia explains her technique like the surgeon describes to his students an incision to be made in a delicate area of bone, veins and tendons. “Once you’ve removed the leaves one by one, you wash them thoroughly and then you need to remove the central part which is difficult to chew and has a rather pungent taste”. On the table rests a very sharp knife, with which, after rolling up each leaf into a long tube, she cuts them into thin rings. When they unfurl and reveal their multiple layers, they look like slender noodles. “To season them I prepare separately a mixture of oil, salt and vinegar, although if I have some lemon juice that’s even better”.
Served immediately after seasoning, “this recipe for cabbage is irresistible”, says Julia. She also likes to sauté it, put it in preserves and make it into soups, but her speciality is “the cabbage salad for people who say they don’t like cabbage”. Given her level of skill, the only problem now is that her principal raw material is no longer that cheap product which used to fill the market counters and made Cubans chew unenthusiastically several decades ago.
Starting with an average-size cabbage, and using my technique of taking off one leaf at a time, and of using a very sharp knife to cut them into very thin strips, my husband and I can have salad for a whole week
Inflation has also had an effect on this vegetable, which has seen an increase in price in recent years. If one cabbage cost 80 pesos at the Plaza La Calzada (Cienfuegos) market a year ago, by the end of October this year the price had gone up to 100 pesos. Nevertheless, the price in this agricultural region par excellence is still massively lower than the 500 pesos needed to buy one at the Calle 19/B market in El Vedado, Havana.
“Starting with an average-size cabbage, and using my technique of taking off one leaf at a time, and of using a very sharp knife to cut them into very thin strips, my husband and I can have salad for a whole week”, Julia explains, but then adds, immediately: “That’s if my pension allows, because what I get per month isn’t really enough for even three cabbages, and with what my husband earns we can barely afford to prepare the dressing”.
Scattered across the world, some of those fishermen who, in the 80s and 90s sat down in front of a food tray in a state canteen where Julia was working, must remember those thin strands that she cut with such care and which they chewed with delight, tasting every mouthful.
Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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