Aida's Graduation Party

I headed to Rochester this weekend with Dominick to celebrate his sister-in-law, Aida's, graduation from nursing school. In typical Rodriguez family tradition, I knew that this would involve lots of delicious food, gutbusting laughter and a serious workout on the dance floor.

We got there a few hours early to help out and spent a frantic few hours chopping, arranging, squeezing (limes that is, for the margaritas), slicing, peeling and so on. When the offical hour arrived, I couldn't be happier because I was starving. The first round included shrimp, a beautiful fruit salad with blackberries, strawberries, pineapple, watermelon, blanched asparagus and bell peppers made up the crudite, bruschetta, olives and a fantastic cheese plate. There was some triple-cream cheese ( I didn't get the name and I am kicking myself for it) that was truly amazing, fluffier than brie but just as creamy. I wanted to make out with this cheese, that's how meltingly delicious it was.

Around this time, Dom's mom, Cuca, started making the arroz con gandules. That woman is amazing. First she whipped out a caldero that was just about as big as the stove. She added oil, achiote and recaito. Now, to put this in perspective, when I make rice and beans, I use about 1/3 cup of recaito. Cuca must have used a pound! See below.



Next, she let the recaito cook down into the achiote oil.



After adding her other mysterious ingredients, Cuca threw in a measly 8 POUNDS of rice, a few pounds of gandules and I don't know how much meat. Now, at this point, I was torn between filling up on cheese and shrimp and throwing down on Cuca's rice and the smell wafting out from the kitchen was more than I could handle. Do you know how long it takes to cook 8 pounds of rice? A very, very long time.




Finally, though, it was dinner time. Along with the rice, there was guineos en escabeche, which is a green banana salad in an oil-vinegar dressing, green salad, potato salad (with apples! Mmm!), macaroni salad, cole slaw, you know, the usual suspects. Aida decided to take some help where she could get it and ordered ribs, chicken and wings from the famed Dinosaur BBQ. The ribs were phenomenal but the wings, in my opinion, were just okay. I was shocked to hear that even in Rochester, a mere 70 miles away from the Chicken Wing capital, there are no good wings to be found. That is most unfortunate.

After dinner, we cut the cake, which was made by none other than Cuca. She cooks a mean rice and beans and she also can bake. It almost seems unfair to be that good, doesn't it? One time, she made this cake that I can only describe a Lemon Pound Delicious. In true, seasoned cook style, when you ask her how she made something, she just shrugs. Anyway, her cakes are legendary, this one was great but I still can't get that lemon cake out of my head and I think that was over five years ago.

Once the mountain of food was consumed and a pinata was visciously attacked by a horde of candy-starved children, the dancing began. We went from Hector Lavoe to Chaka Khan to Elvis Crespo to Lisa Lisa, a wild knot of swirling bodies directly in front of the speakers, where else?




The party had to end sometime though so we took our tired selves and our throbbing feet back home. I was exhausted but it was a good party and the best of all, was that I came home bearing a big, old plate of Cuca's rice.