Act Like You Meant to Do It

Monday night, we taped a couple more cooking shows for WVPT in Harrisonburg. In the first 20-minute segment, I demonstrated a little Nueva Cocina Cubana with my version of Camarones con Mojo.

This dish has a moderately sophisticated presentation with an absolutely smooth black bean soup in the well of a very large soup plate, a tostón (plantain fritter) in the center of that, with a persimmon (for want of decent mangoes right now) salsa on the tostón, surrounded by three shrimp that had been marinated in mojo (a sour orange, garlic, and oregano marinade), with a little mojo drizzled over the top.

I had intended to perhaps dot the black bean soup with a little thinned out sour cream, but the host of the show in placing the salsa on top of the tostón let a single piece of persimmon fall into the soup. She worried on camera that she had ruined the presentation. Nonsense. I got a few more pieces of persimmon and strew them about the soup and said, "Always act like you meant to do it!"

Everybody, lighten up in the kitchen. It's just food. If it doesn't go exactly as you planned, act like it did and laugh about it.

For those of you looking for a recipe, it is included in my new cookbook due out in just a very few short weeks.