/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Amusing stories? I'll start.

My mother-in-law is from Cuba. All the women in the family were/are great cooks except for her mother, who grew up 'rich' and never had to learn.

So one day, shortly after they made their escape to the U.S (right around Castro's rise), her mother decided to try one of the family's most loved dishes: stuffed rice.
It's basic peasant food, delicious and simple. It's like stuffed peppers without the whole peppers. She asked one of her husband's sisters for the recipe and a brief explanation, then she was off.

Cut to 3am and she's crying in the kitchen, nearly hysterical in her frustration. Her husband wakes up and finds her freaking out.

"I don't understand! Is there a trick to it? How does your sister do it?"

Upon inspection of the kitchen, he finds a big pot of cooked rice, a hell of a mess, and a sewing needle. As it turns out, she spent the whole evening trying to figure out how to hollow out the individual grains so she could stuff them. Stuffed rice.