ARROZ A LA CUBANA

Growing up in a Spanish family, we delighted in the fiesta-like dishes prepared by my grandmother. Some of the dishes she prepared and cooked were Paella, Morcon, Kaldereta, Ensaymada to name a few. But one dish stood out for me as a comfort food - Arroz a la Cubana!
Arroz a la cubana (Cuban-style rice) or arroz cubano is a dish eaten in many Spanish-speaking countries. Its defining ingredients are rice and a fried egg. A plantain or banana, and tomato sauce, are so frequently used as often to be considered defining ingredients.[1][2] Various informal sources state without references that it originated in Peru.[3] Some authors consider that it may have originated from rice dishes with fried eggs from Cuba when it was a Spanish colony.[5]

In Spain, a typical dish of arroz a la cubana consists of a serving of white rice with tomato sauce and a fried egg. Sometimes a plantain[6] or banana[7] is fried with the other ingredients.[2]

Arroz a la cubana has been eaten in the Philippines since Spanish colonial times[8] A modern version[2] typically consists of ground beef sauteed with onions, garlic, tomato sauce, diced potatoes, raisins, and diced carrots, plus white rice, a fried egg and a ripe native plantain, sliced length-wise and fried.

In Peru, it is common for the dish to consist of white rice, fried plantain, a fried hot-dog wiener, and a fried egg over the white rice.[6]

1. Ismael Sarmiento Ramírez, (2003), Alimentación y relaciones sociales en la Cuba colonial, Anales del Museo de América, ISSN 1133-8741, Nº. 11, pp 197-226 (Spanish)
2. Arroz a la Cubana (Cuban Rice), The Philippine Way. This variant uses banana.
3. "Arroz a la cubana - a Peruvian dish" (Spanish)
4. Arroz a la Cubana
5. Cándido Hurones, (2009), Cómo freír un huevo. La innovación didáctica al servicio de la docencia universitaria, Entelequia: revista interdisciplinar, ISSN-e 1885-6985, No. 10, pp. 239-252 (Spanish)
6. Recipe from Perú, using plantain
7. In most Spanish-speaking countries, "plátano" means both "plantain" and "banana". For example, a recipe given in both English and Spanish by a cookery school in Spain gives "plátano" in the Spanish version of a recipe [1], and "banana" in the English translation [2]. In other Spanish-speaking countries the word "banana" as in English is used.
8. Antonio Quilis,Celia Casado Fresnillo, (2008), La lengua española en Filipinas: Historia. Situación actual, CSIC, Madrid. (Spanish)