A pound of split peas cost 100 pesos a year ago and today it costs 320
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 15 September 2024 – It formed part of a much rejected menu in the 1970’s and 80’s. Along with rice and egg, the split pea was one of the vilified “three musketeers” that were so often served up in the canteens of schools and work places. There were Cubans who swore never to eat them again, and yet today they long for a plate of their thick yellow broth; but now they’re difficult to afford.
“At school they gave us split peas every day, watery, unseasoned, and with nothing else added. I got to hate them so much I couldn’t even look at them”, remembers Lisandro, 47, who spent three terms at one of those pre-university establishments in the countryside where one went to be trained as a “New Man” – a place from which he came out, he says, “with only giardiasis, twenty pounds less in weight and a conjunctivitis that nothing could rid me of”.
Of those times he particularly remembers the split peas which were served up in a metal tray, “gungy at the bottom because they never washed them properly”. The dinner ladies gave us basically nothing – not a potato nor a scrap of meat, and one’s heart sank”. Most of the time whenever they served them they stayed on the plate – very few people ate them”.
There were Cubans who swore never to eat them again, and yet today they long for a plate of them
However, this week Lisandro asked his sister who lives in Sancti Spíritus to bring him a few pounds of split peas because “they’re cheaper over there” and his two children want to eat a nice stew made from these little peas, sometimes green, sometimes yellow, which have tripled in price in less than a year in Cuban markets.
Where a pound of split peas cost 100 pesos at the La Plaza Boulevard market in Sancti Spíritus in August 2023, today you have to pay 320 pesos for the same quantity. “Even so, they’re cheaper than in Havana, where last week the price rose to 380 pesos”, the habanero tells 14ymedio.
An imported product, which is barely grown in Cuba, the split pea was for decades associated with the poorest of dinner tables, including those in prisons and military quarters. But its increase in price, along with the decrease in production of other foodstuffs such as black and red beans, has revalued its image in Cuban kitchens. The arrival of better presented varieties has also helped to provide the old ’musketeer’ with a new royal cloak.
The split pea has also, for almost half a century, provided a way of stretching out the scarce commodity of coffee. After toasting and milling, the peas join the mixture which ends up in the coffee pots of Cuban homes. The widespread use of this blend has reached such a point on the island that there are now people who can’t enjoy a good cup of coffee if it doesn’t have the corresponding portion of ground peas in the mix.
The split pea was for decades associated with the poorest of dinner tables, including those in prisons and military quarters
“We have green, yellow, split and shelled peas in half or one kilogram jars”, the attentive employee of a mipyme (independent) shop in central Havana tells us. On the shelves, sacks bearing the recognisable logo of American brand Goya contain peas which are cleaned, and without the skin which many people say causes them digestive problems.
“They’re broken down and made into a San Germán puré as soon as they’re softened, and they taste really good”, says the woman to a customer who’s yet undecided whether to put her hand in her pocket and take out the 500 pesos needed to buy the half kilo packet. “These aren’t like the old ones, these are real quality”, says the seller.
Once taken home, the little peas end up in a pressure cooker with other ingredients to hand – which could be basic onions and garlic, some meat and eddoe herbs, all of which finally end up on the kids’ – and the older family members’ – plates. And while they taste this thick broth, a certain nostalgia will be triggered in some of them.
“I never thought that this would bring back so many memories of my younger days”, says Lisandro. “My mates and I used to make catapaults to fire split peas with, and in the school canteen the game was to fire them at the girls, and at the teachers when they weren’t looking”.
“In those days I reared pigeons and the split peas we got from the store all went to them as no one in our house wanted to eat them – it was enough that we had to eat them in school and our parents in the works canteen”, he recalls. Now, in that old “All for one and one for all” style of pact, the egg, the rice and their eternal companion the split pea have climbed up the class ladder: the three inseparables have now joined the royal table, close to those very exclusive dishes – the chickpea or the pork dish.
Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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