Culture

You bring the food! Are you looking for traditional Dominican Christmas recipes? Find them in our Holiday Special. We have revised, re-written and added new photos to these recipes to make things much easier for you. During these weeks we will also bring you new dishes that are non-traditional but full of Dominican flavors so

A crispy flat bread made from cassava (yuca) flour – was at the centre of the Taíno diet. When the Spanish first arrived on the island, they soon found that casabe had advantages over their traditional European bread, in that it does not go stale or mouldy. For this reason, it is said that the

Oranges are known as ‘chinas’ in the Dominican Republic because they come from China. Surely not! Everybody knows that oranges come from the Mediterranean. Spain and Israel are famous for their citrus exports with their Seville, Valencia and Jaffa varieties. Morocco is also an important exporter of oranges. But if you scratch the surface and

In one of my articles I made the distinction between the art and science of different types of food preparation. My basic premise was that cooking was more of an art, whereas baking is more of a science, with certain exceptions to that rule. Something we frequently mention in passing, but have not tackled in

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw was referring to Great Britain and the United States when he said “Two nations divided by a common language”. Aunt Ilana hazards to extend this to “Twenty-one nations divided by a common language” when it comes to Spanish. When writing about Dominican cooking to an international audience, such as yourselves

The Dominican Republic has its share of unusual names for fruit and vegetables that are unknown in much of the rest of the Spanish-speaking world. We’ve run through a long list of these on several occasions here on Dominican Cooking, and looked in depth at particular examples such as the mystery of oranges being called

Dominicans and coffee go together like… well they just go together. It is rare to find a Dominican who doesn’t love coffee. There is a special bond between people and one of the country’s main export commodities, and it is no coincidence that sugar is an important ingredient in the proper cup of Dominican coffee.

“What is a plantain?”. “How do you cook a plantain?”. Let me answer these questions for you. For a large chunk of the world, plantains are exotic and mysterious. Everybody knows bananas, but what to do with this things that look like bananas can’t be eaten raw? A great deal of earthlings would probably see a

Someone recently inquired whether or not mamajuana was available for export. Mamawhat, you ask? You know, the spiced rum that you may have had straight from the lid of its bottle on the street (oh, was that just me?), or perhaps as an after-dinner liqueur. Spiced with cinnamon, medicinal leaves and herbs – among other

Aquí siempre es a buen tiempo / cuando es hora de comer / porque así nos enseñaron / y lo tenemos por ley / donde comen dos seguro / se pueden sentar tres…* – Catholic Hymn So what is the deal with Buen Provecho and A Buen Tiempo? Both are said at mealtimes, and yet

Aunt Clara’s Dominican Cooking, besides being a collection of recipes of the Dominican Republic, source of information about our cuisine, dishes, ingredients, and history is also thought as a help for those who want to learn about the Dominican culinary culture. Dominican cuisine is easy and spontaneous. As in any other part of the world,