JOST A MON

For programmed occasions when the client wanted to show off his conquest and proposed having some associates over for dinner, culinary Margarita offered two cosmopolitan alternatives: a main entrée of fondue bourguignonne (with all the right silver and china), or chicken Maryland supreme. 

Margarita's specialty was, in fact, chicken. In forty minutes she could bone it, stuff it, and sew it up with bamboo needles. Another half an hour in the pressure cooker and it was done. But that was only for impromptu dinners. Sometimes, when a client had something good to say about traditional Cuban cuisine like they serve at the Bodeguita del Medio, Alicia's mother would let out a soprano laugh. "Whatever are you talking about? Good food at the Bodeguita?" 

By that time she would already have been treating him like an old friend, talking to him in the familiar tu, joking around, waving her restless hand in his face and inviting him to taste her own Cuban cuisine, which was much better, of course. 

And in one manner of speaking, it was. 

In matters of traditional Cuban cuisine, however, Margarita was a great fraud. If the guest was from Europe or from the southern cone of South America, for example, Margarita replaced the yuca con mojo with well-seasoned baked potatoes; the pork she prepared very lean and dry and just slightly pink in the center of the slices; the congri rice was never runny, and she seasoned it with a whole list of ingredients that congri was never meant to take. But she did produce a range of haut cuisine tastes, light with the slightest touch of bitter-sweet, which everyone praised. 

She also did herself grand with Italian pasta: cannelloni, lasagna, fettuccini, ravioli, gnocchi; with sauces like il bolognesa, il pesto, le vongole, l'arrabbiata, la puttanesca. And when there were more than eight to dinner, there was the ever popular paella that never let her down.