"islands" news and stories

Five men from Papua New Guinea survived more than two months at sea by eating driftwood and coconut shells.

Their horrendous ordeal began when the family of eight's 22-foot boat ran out of fuel on a trip to a nearby island.

Ocean Encounter, a U.S. fishing ship, ended up rescuing the men two months later near the South Pacific island, Nauru. Two of the seven men that were rescued unfortunately passed away from severe malnutrition before the rescue vessel could reach proper medical assistance. The eighth passenger, a 15-year-old boy, drowned before the rescue boat arrived after jumping into the water to recover a shirt that had blown away.

A cafecito (with a Hemingway Special chaser). Photo: Erin Meister

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

Doesn't the heat make you daydream about being someplace else?

Someplace tropical and friendly, where the heat is part of the romance -- bellying up to a Havana lunch counter, enjoying the languid spinning of a lazy ceiling fan, the cool droplets crawling down the side of a sweating glass, the tinny tenor of cantador Beny Moré. And, naturally, a coffee.

You're thinking, "Coffee?! Who daydreams about coffee while sweat is making tracks down your spine?"

Me, that's who.

Brutal summer days are made for cafecito -- the thick, strong Cuban-style espresso brewed with sugar that's best when belted first thing in the morning. It may look like a regular ol' espresso, but the extra sweet kick might just jump-start your day a little quicker.

A muy tropical cafecito video, after the jump.

Most shredded potatoes find themselves nestled inside latkes and hashbrowns. But if you want to get islandy (or Latin American), something else gets thrown into the mix -- black beans.

Suddenly, that fried and starchy side gets a whole new depth -- the meaty beans offering a thicker and slightly creamier texture and a more substantial latke sort of flavor. Rather than a crisp, thin slab of potato, you get a thicker pancake, crisp on the outside and creamy inside.

Putting together potato and black bean pancakes isn't the quickest task, unfortunately. In the recipe that follows, you must rid the potatoes of their water, chop up a whole myriad of ingredients, let then firm in the fridge, form them, coat them (in ground saltines which gives them a nice, unique taste), fry them and then bake them.

So it's not really the sort of dish you throw together after work unless you like eating really late. But when you've got some extra time or an extra hand or two in the kitchen, this side quickly becomes a nice twist to your meal.

The following recipe is quite basic, relying on fresh parsley and bacon to amp up the flavor, but there are other ways to make these pancakes pop. They're just itching for some hot peppers, extra spices or even a coriander + cilantro twist.

Potato and black bean pancakes after the jump.

If there was one thing that challenged Key West's proliferation of key lime pies, it was rum cakes. For a while, the Tortuga Rum Company had a little shop on the island -- not only offering a proliferation of cakes to purchase, but every flavor waiting in bins to sample. It was, simply, the most wonderful way to pick sweets to buy.

That store is no longer there, but the cakes continue to haunt shelves across the island. Unfortunately, they're not easy to come by in most other areas, unless you've got a good deal of cash saved up to order the $30-plus large cake online.

That means we must do our best to replicate, and at least one recipe gets close -- Recipe Zaar's Almost Tortuga Rum Cake.

Find out how after the jump.

The one thing you realize quite quickly about Cuban cooking is that Cuba knows how to serve a pig. The beef and fish might be tasty, but there's just something about Cuban flavors and pork that was just meant to be.

Having a bottle of sherry in my fridge, one that really needs to be put to use, quickly zeroed in on a recipe for Ginger Sherried Roasted Pork from Cuba Cucina! This recipe is quite simple while infusing a lot of flavor into your run-of-the-mill pork tenderloin.

You just whip together a bunch of ingredients to make a marinade, let the pork marinate in the fridge for a few hours (turning a few times for even marination), and then roasted for 1.5 hours at 325. That's it. Voila! Heck, I'm inclined to bust this out the next time I want to have a tasty dinner, but without the effort. Just get things marinating a day ahead, and you've got a dish that only requires you to throw it in the oven on dinner day.

Hit the jump for the ingredients, and happy pork to you!