Cuban Picadillo

Near the end of my niece’s stay, we had a crazy day where everyone was tremendously productive, but nobody had a moment to think about dinner. It wasn’t my night to cook, so wasn’t on my radar, but when the situation became clear, I remembered how easy and fun it had been to have the Argentinean picadillo. How fun would it be to try another flavor profile? My niece is sensitive to corn, so she joined Sophia and I in eating hers on big romaine leaves. Again as I was opening this book, I marveled at the set up of it; love how there are basic recipe instructions with pictures, followed by a chart of various combinations you can use to change the recipe up.

So, from the book Cooking Know-How , we made this Cuban-style picadillo, which used dried mango (looks like corn kernels in my pic), green olives, cilantro, and cumin along with more standard elements. I had to run out to the store for a couple of these ingredients, and wasn’t able to find green olives that weren’t stuffed with something. Thankfully found a jar where the olives were stuffed with garlic and just cut a step (chopping garlic) out of the recipe.



My niece enjoyed the dish very much – love the blog anonymity!



Like any good homeschooling mama, I made them all find Cuba on the globe first and I put on a Pandora station called “Cuban Music”. Here they are being all exuberant about the great flavor combo:



And don’t worry sis: those blue corn chips were for the others :-)