Cuban Cafe Girl Percolates

Daisy Martinez, Tostobueno® the Love Affair Continues! Her Latest Cookbook Features The Ultimate Tostonera®, y Platanos Rellenos

Cuban Cafe Girl Percolates — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 01:04:20 +0000

Yesterday was the last Lehman College Latin concert for the summer. The Tosto-Chicks™ had a blast . . . kind of felt like the last day of school before summer break. We said goodbye to the very lovable CHOCO, a vendor neighbor to our left. I’m sure CHOCO is not his God-given name. And in all honesty, I have no clue what that could be. He–CHOCO–is the mastermind behind one of the best organized events this City has the pleasure of hosting.

In less than two months, Salsa enthusiasts from all over the world will arrive at the NY Hilton for the The 10 Annual New York International Salsa Congress. It will be great fun and so well organized, thanks to CHOCO and his team. We will sell tostoneras to Salsa lovers from China, Ireland and England just like we did last year. But I digress. Back to Lehman College and our Tostobueno® fans at the last concert there this summer.

And now let’s cue for her entrance, Daisy Martinez whose new book promises to introduce all of America to Latin cooking-her way, the way “Julia Child introduced us to French cooking. [And] Lidia Bastianich introduced us to Italian cooking.”

From Daisy’s website: “In a country where salsa now outsells ketchup, Daisy Martinez is out on a mission to change the way we cook.” So what does Daisy have to do with the Lehman College Concert Series? LOTS! For the second Sunday in a row, Tosto-fans have stopped by our table to share their “I bought Daisy’s new cookbook: Daisy: Morning, Noon and Night, I turned to the tostones chapter, and there was the Tostobueno®.

And today I answer the “Who Invented the Tostonera?” question. The short answer: Noone invented the tostonera.

Cuban Cafe Girl Percolates — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:25:43 +0000

There’s an episode of Friends–my all time favorite comfort show–where Freddie Prinz, Jr. is Sandy, an ultrasensitive nanny hired to look after Emma, Rachel and Ross’s baby [Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer].

Sandy: I, uh, I hope you don’t mind, I used some of my handmade lotion on Emma. It’s a mixture of calandula and honey cream. It’ll dry that rash right up. Plus, it keeps the hands young.
Rachel: Yes! Sandy, you’re hired!
Sandy: That’s great! (Starting to cry) I’m sorry, its just such an emotional thing when you’re welcomed into a new family.
Rachel: Aw, come here.
Ross: You gotta be at least bi.

And the shows running joke becomes: “A man nanny or man-ny is like a woman . . .?

“What? What is the end of that sentence?,” an exasperated Chandler asks.

Well, that’s how I felt at Miami’s Cuba Nostalgia a couple of months ago when astonished and surprised Cubans would ask me who invented our double sided, multiple use and eco-friendly tostonera.

“Inventing the tostonera is like someone claiming to invent the . . . ?“

“What? What is the end of that sentence?,” I found myself asking over and over again.

Like Chandler, I was never able to fill-in the blank. So I went straight to the bottom line, as I am apt to do:

“NO ONE INVENTED THE TOSTONERA. IT ALWAYS WAS,” became my stock answer.

And being in a very Catholic city, I got all religious to buttress my point.

“It’s just like the Sisters at St. Joseph’s Elementary taught us about Papa Dios: ”God has no beginning and no end. God always is.”

Ditto for the tostonera!

Now from a leap a faith to the legal.

Even with my law degree, patent law is daunting, but this is the bottom line: “The invention must be new, useful, and, even though new, it must have been nonobvious at the time it was invented” in order to be granted a Utility Patent.

My mother was smashing plantains as far back as I can remember, as did my grandmother in Cuba. (And I would go back to the rellies in Spain, but I think the Latin Plantian Love started in Cuba.) But setting the record straight is not why this blog, like Armando Galarraga name, will have next to it an asterick.

The tostonera has gone mainsteam.

Think of it, I am writing about a plantain smasher using Friends and Catholic elementary school doctrine to make a point. It’s the Ultimate Melting Pot Tale.

Or shall I say: Ultimate Melting Tosto Tale.

And by going mainstream, it’s the first blog that lawyers at the USPTO can use as “subject matter experts talking about prior art.”

Huh? Well, a conversation a while back with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was quite illuminating. Subject matters experts is the term-of-art used by the USPTO to describe individuals who are experts in their fields. In this case, those would be all the chefs I have spoken to who can be called upon by the USPTO to refute the patentability of the tostonera.“Even though the USPTO have great patent examiners, they are not Wolfgang Puck,” said the USPTO laywer.

A very fitting CODA to my conversation, and this entry.

So next time someone wants to patent a tostonera, this blog can be used as “subject matter experts talking about prior art.”

And that is a beautiful thing!

NEXT: I will tackle our eco-friendly manufacturing versus plastic.

“You invented this tostonera?” they ask time and time again at Cuba Nostalgia . . . And I reply, “no one invented the tostonera. It always was.”

Cuban Cafe Girl Percolates — Sat, 22 May 2010 00:28:01 +0000

I’m back home . . . and I love it.

No, I’m not in Brooklyn were I was a born and go visit every 10 years or so. Miami? Good guess, and kind of in the ballpark. Yes, I am in SoFla, but the home grown feeling is coming from the annual blow-out — I-remember-Cuba-while-drowning-in-a-sea-of-guayaberas event that is CUBA NOSTALGIA.

This is only my second year, but, well I bond quickly and I’ve missed my CN peeps terribly.

Next to me are my last years neighbors: Edible Expressions or, basically, yummy food items dipped in chocolate . . . white or dark. The owner is Vanessa Gonzalez and she’s all of 25. Her sister Cassandra, who likes reading books by Nicholas Sparks: The Last Song, The Notebook and Nights in Rodanthe — (See a trend? )– dresses up once a year as Ms. Cuba, and dances the night away with dad, while mom and sis sells bite size chunks of the legal drug.

In Miami, everything is always a family affair.

MS. CUBA AND DAD DANCE THE DAY AWAY AT CUBA NOSTALGIA

What also warms the cockles of mi corazon is the bonding that happens when I find myself in the middle of the biggest Cuban event outside of Miami’s “Calle Ocho.” And do they bond. Twenty seconds into the conversation, my accent comes up.

“You’re Puerto Rican,” they ask? “Right?” And for the upteenth time that morning, I reply, “No. I was born and raised in Brooklyn. During the 60s. Puerto Ricans outnumbered Cubans tben about 20 to 1. So yes, I replace my “Ls” with “Rs. Instead of sor for sun, I say sol.”

Oh well.

They constantly call my Spanish, or actually Spanglish, to my attention.

“I’m so sorry,” I reply, blaming New York once again with its lack of Cubans. I take great pains to explain that all the Cubans are in Union City, New Jersey, and I never go there. Trust me, it’s EMBARRASSING, after all Spanish was my first language.

But I take no offense with their instant familiarity. These are my peeps, and every year they teach me a thing or two about myself, about Cuba and believe it or not, about the plantain. And there’s plenty to learn.

My first lesson comes from Vernays Rodriguez.

I didn’t quite get the entire story, but Vernays knows his way around a pot of frijoles negros. About four years ago PBS/Miami randomly stopped by his house to inquire about shooting a special there about Christmas in Cuba. So before Vernays could say lechon asado, the crew pulled in and with them came Celia Cruz, the Estafans, Olga Guillot and just about any body in the Cuban-Miami Who’s Who.

So this is what Vernays has to say about the Tachino/Tostones dilemma.

I Did What Guy Fieri Did . . . I MAMBO-ed

Cuban Cafe Girl Percolates — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 02:19:19 +0000

Okay a bit of an explanation.

I call it “the no-budget market research.”

There are no focus groups. No expensive surveys. Just a phone call if a buyer leaves a phone number or an email if they prefer e-chatting. So after a few of these conversations, a pattern started emerging. Sales bounced whenever The Food Network aired one particular Diners, Drive-in and Dives.

It’s the segment when Guy MAMBO-ed.

Click to view slideshow.

So besides the pilot shoot and meeting with my LA based actors and doing all those things industry peeps do when knee deep in industry, I figured me and The Ultimate Tostonera® would pay the good folks at Mambos Cafe a surprise visit. Get them to replace the single cup tostonera I saw them use on the show with our eco-friendly, dual purpose Tostobueno®.

Guy Fieri's stop @ Mambos Cafe, a Cuban restaurant in Cali for tostones rellenos prompted me to stop by and present owner Migdalia with the only eco-friendly, dual purpose plantain smasher.

California Here I Come . . .

Cuban Cafe Girl Percolates — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:45:13 +0000

I felt just like Lucy!

There I was watching a Law and Order rerun when the call came.

“Did he book the pilot?” I ask, holding my breath. After what felt like the longest two seconds ever, the reply came. “Yes.”

“Oh my God,” was all I could muster.

The second I got off the phone, time–as we all know it–stopped for me. What do I do? Who do I call? My partner, the agent or the actor?

Usually the agent gets THAT call, first. I just got lucky . . . I guess.

So who did I call? His agent! Please. For two week, we suffered the rollercoaster-ride-during-a-mild-earthquake that the industry has dubbed “pilot season.” So did the actor. Let’s not forget the actor, but it’s just as gut wrenching for all of us below the line.

And just like Lucy, and Ricky, and Ethel and Fred sans the used Cadillac off to California I went. I don’t remember when I was last there, but I do recall having seen three movies during my last visit: Piano and Mrs. Doubtfire, and I worked one premiere A Dangerous Woman. Actually, that’s why I went in the first place . . . to work that premiere.

Let’s see. IMDB tells me I went to LA in 1993. That would mean that one year later my partner and I would start a talent management company for ethnic actors. And 16 years after that I would set foot on the set of a NBC pilot shooting in Chatsworth, California.

Pssssst. I got it from good authority that apparantly Chatsworth is the porn shooting capital of the world.

But I’m not here to blog about that. Or the pilot shoot for that matter. Oh, no. I cloak and dagger that part of my life. Interestingly enough, those who know that side of me, have no clue about the other. So here goes: When not managing actors, I’m pitching a product: Tostobueno, the Ultimate Tostonera® . . . or what The Food Network has dubbed, the Old-Fashioned Plantain Smasher.

For the uninitiated tostones are simply twice fried plantain and served in many Latin homes for lunch and/or dinner up to three, four times a week.

The Plantain GPS Lowdown. The fastest way to delicious twice fried plantains is to know how to order them. Cuban Desi Arnaz will order tostones. Brunching with Colombian beauty Sofia Vergara? Remember to order patacones. And it doesn’t stop there, no wonder this fruit (Yes, it’s a fruit.) is so misunderstood.

During one of my plantain fact finding missions, the owner of El Morro Castle, a well-known Cuban restaurant in Hialeah, FL tells me that certain parts of Cuba call tostones “tachinos.” Why? I don’t have a clue. Oh, wait as I write this my brain is downloading a memory. I think he said that “tachinos” is the sound the back of a shoe makes when it hits the once fried plantains. Now if this is true — and I’m not embellishing, interestingly enough the first syllable in patacones refers to foot.

Tostobueno® is going to Miami in May for Cuba Nostalgia. I am going to have my aunt take me back to El Morro Castle, and this time I’m gonna take notes.

Morro Castle's Owner Chats with my Aunt, Tia Maria.

So a recap. Tostones are Patacones are Tachinos are Plantain Chips are Twice Fried Plantains. It just depends if it’s a Dominican, Cuban, Colombian or Puerto Rican home serving what many considered the Latin equivalent of the American French Fry.

Fox 5's Anne Craig and the Plantain for a Tostobueno®/Hispanic Hertiage remote from Spanish Harlem.

Evolution of a Toston/Plantain Chip? Well … Hardly. Why? Time consuming to make until now. After four years of studying the tostonera, on June 26th, 2006, my business partner, Don Williams aka DonClark Williams aka The Simple Chef® was issued a design patent on Tostobueno, The Ultimate Tostonera®. And with that the plantain was given a culinary life beyond the toston.

Now green plantain come with a choice of savory or sweet toppings.

That's a plantain cup on a bed of chocolate w/cherries & a dollap of whipped cream

RECIPE: The Simple Chef’s Tex-Mex Green Plantain Tostada Receipe.

Click to view slideshow.

So when in California do as Guy Fieri does.

That’s what I did. I MAMBO-ED.