Noche Buena Dinner

The Cuban tradition is to eat Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve and then roll to Midnight Mass after a meal of pork, yucca, black beans and rice, followed by flan and turròn, all washed down with excellent wine, port, and coffee. Now that I'm older and struggle incredibly during midnight mass to stay awake after such as a massive meal, I really respect the effort my parents exerted when we were younger present a perfect Christmas eve. They used to host a Noche Buena party for friends, go to Midnight mass, come home to clean up the mess and then stay up until 3am assembling toys and arranging them under the tree for their sleeping children who were counting on Santa Claus to deliver the goods.



The protein for the traditional Noche Buena is pork, usually leg, pierna, marinated either in a garlic paste that contains salt, pepper, oregano, and olive oil or the traditional Goya product, mojo criollo, which is a combination of garlic, onion and citrus. This year my mother served a pork rib roast that we marinated in the garlic paste for 2 hours, and eventually poured mojo criollo while it cooked.

The pork is accompanied by boiled yucca that is covered in mojo de ajo, which is sweated onions that are first marinated for an hour in sour orange juice mixed with mashed garlic. Also served at dinner is black beans and rice or Congrì (black beans and rice cooked together), plantains, and water cress salad. Sadly, I only captured the yucca on camera, but yucca is my favorite component of the meal.The finished pork roast.

My good friend Johnous, about to pounce on the pork roast.

Check out the next post about Cuban Sandwiches made from the Noche Buena pork roast.