In Melbourne, Florida, Betty Helton relies on a can of cranberry sauce to create the sweet sauce for this tender pork entree. She adds orange juice and ground cloves to the mixture to season it nicely as it simmers.
While not nearly as sweet as bananas, plantains do have a sweet flavor. In this soup we keep that sweetness at bay by using firm plantains with green skins rather than riper brown-skinned ones--the sugars will have not yet developed, so the fruit will add starchy body to the soup without too much sweetness.
Caribbean-influenced shrimp, skewered with sugarcane and basted with a dark rum glaze, rely on high heat to caramelize the glaze and infuse the shrimp from the inside out with the cane's mild sweetness.
I like to brush the interior of this sandwich with a mojo, a flavorful garlic-lime mixture. Because it’s not easy to find Cuban bread in my area, I use sub or bulky rolls, which acquire a crusty texture when pressed during cooking. If you have a panini grill, you can use it instead of pan-cooking the sandwiches.
