Between seas and tastes

PROPER NOUNS CANNOT BE MISSING TO SNACKS AND DRINKS, ALLUSIVE TO THE TOPONYMY THEY BELONG TO AND TO THE VERY CULTURED PROVINCE OF MATANZAS

You can feel the beauty of the moonlit nights, reflected in two seas so close together and yet so different (1)

The following description of her excursions by wagon from the city of Cárdenas comes from that little Cuban woman, who ushered in the 20th century with her birth and who expressed so many praises full of Cuban character in her always pleasant prose: "They are on their way to Varadero, to the divine beach of twenty-one leagues of fine white sand" (2).

Geographically identified as the Hicacos Peninsula, it did not take long to deserve, since the late 1950s, the exalting nickname of "the blue beach" or "the most beautiful beach in the world".

Interesting mixture of sensorialities, which recall the inevitable conjugation of bodily perceptions with spirituality, includes our deeply-rooted Cuban writer, in frank waste of her affective memory, when she narrates: Childhood is caught in the baskets of silver sardines that are fried greedily and eaten heads and all. Childhood fantasy is caught in the nets of the tarrayas; it rocks in the swaying of the boats that fish far away (3).

And, certainly, neither the most comprehensive enjoyment of the bounties of nature, nor the most overflowing hedonistic interpretation of the surrounding realities, could be consummated without something to eat and drink. Fortunately, each local landscape of the Big Island is complemented by its gastronomic singularities. This is how several exponents of the blessed region, also identified as "the promised land", are shown. This comparison is stripped of any irreverent pretension towards the same moniker used in the Holy Bible to name the place offered by God, where it would be so good to be true. Rather, vernacular and healthy interpretation of a new paradise.

Proper names cannot be missing for snacks and drinks, allusive to the toponymy to which they belong and to the very cultured province of Matanzas. Enjoy, then, kind readers, with the most sincere ways to show the taste heritage of people like Cubans, always devoted to the cult of sympathy: recipes that deserve names.