Cuban Yuca House
- Two kilograms of cassava
Peel, wash and grate the cassava.
Place it in a clean cloth and squeeze to remove as much liquid as possible.
This cassava flour must be dried in the (Cuban) sun for about 30 minutes.
Then place a frying pan on the fire and when it is already very hot, carefully cover the entire bottom with part of the cassava mass.
It is first cooked on one side then the other until it is roasted. This can also be done on a hot plate or burén.
The pan should be lightly pre-greased.
Casabe is eaten today with a mojito or mojo criollo, with oil, or with roast pork or ropa vieja. A series of delicious dishes can also be prepared with casabe, such as:
Casabe with sugar, grated coconut, all kinds of meat, syrup and others.
It's a certain type of bread, so, as a traditional Cuban phrase says: "In the absence of bread, casabe is good then!" (A falta de pan, casabe!) to express that there is always an alternative solution.
If you ever walk around Camagüey, take advantage of it, it is the region of Cuba where this ancestral tradition is best maintained in Cuba. Their casabe is just perfect.
Casabe de yuca (cassava) is an unleavened, crunchy, thin, circular bread made from toasted cassava flour. Its production and consumption dates back to pre-Hispanic times.
Cassava was, along with corn, one of the main crops of pre-Columbian times. Due to the conservation possibilities, casabe was one of the fundamental sources of food for the indigenous peoples of the northern subcontinent and was part of the traditional diet of the indigenous inhabitants; Taínos and Arawaks of the Caribbean.
To make casabe, cassava must be removed from the ground, peeled and grated, then pressed with a sieve which was usually hung from a tree branch or ceiling beam, and closed at one end with a loop. with a fixed stick or lever that is pressed to remove the milky and bitter liquid from the cassava pulp which is otherwise toxic. The pulp should be dried in the sun then spread on a hot plate to be toasted into thin, round cakes approximately 20 to 30 cm in diameter and 1 to 2 mm thick.
The thin, crispy casabe is often broken into pieces and eaten like biscuits.