Instant Pot black bean soup lets the flavours of Cuban cooking shine

When she was growing up in Miami, Ana Quincoces tells me, every day instead of an alarm, I woke up to the sound of the pressure cooker. She makes a...

When she was growing up in Miami, Ana Quincoces tells me, every day "instead of an alarm, I woke up to the sound of the pressure cooker.” She makes a hissing noise and smiles.

Quincoces, 58, is Cuban American, so you can probably guess what was in that pressure cooker: black beans. And to her, they represented just about everything that she loves about the food of her parents’ homeland, and still do: They’re comforting, and especially when made the Cuban way, they boast deep, satisfying flavours.

In 2007, years before she became famous for starring in "The Real Housewives of Miami,” Quincoces wrote her first cookbook, "Cuban Chicks Can Cook,” and she remembers saying then that she would never cook anything but traditional Cuban food. She didn’t like it when people tried to make it something that it’s not, such as by adding a mango sauce to any old dish, "and suddenly it was Cuban. Cuban food doesn’t have mango sauce.”

Fast forward to 2024 and, as Quincoces puts it, "Everything has changed about the way we eat.” So many people are looking for something that’s gluten-free, or that adheres to a Keto diet, or is vegetarian or vegan. And that’s why Quincoces wanted to update the cuisine in her fourth cookbook, "Modern Cuban” (University Press of Florida, 2024).

"I’m okay with the fact that people do have different eating preferences, requirements or necessities,” she tells me in a Zoom conversation from North Carolina, where she is spending time with a daughter who recently had a baby.