Guarapo

the fresh cane juice of the Cuban roadside: whole stalks fed through a roller press, the pale green juice caught, sharpened with lime, and poured over crushed ice to be drunk within the hour

Origin: Cuba

From the journey of Sugar Cane.

Cuba became the largest sugar producer on earth within thirty years of the destruction of Saint-Domingue, and held that position for most of the nineteenth century on the labour of some eight hundred thousand enslaved Africans and, latterly, indentured Chinese. What survives of that history at the Cuban roadside is the plant in its simplest and oldest form. A guarapera is a stall with a trapiche, a set of steel rollers turned by hand or by a small motor, through which whole peeled stalks are fed two or three times; the pale, slightly cloudy, faintly grey-green juice runs into a jug, is strained, and is served over crushed ice with a wedge of lime. It tastes almost nothing like sugar. It is grassy and vegetal, sweet in a light, watery, almost floral way, and it goes off with startling speed, fermenting and turning grey within a few hours, which is precisely why it can only be drunk where the cane is grown. The same drink is guarapo across Colombia and Venezuela, caldo de cana or garapa in Brazil, agua de caña in Mexico, and it is the ancestor of every other product in this entry: leave it to ferment and it becomes a cane wine, distil that and it becomes rum.

Ingredients

Guarapo

  • 3 kg fresh sugar cane stalks, cut into 30 cm lengths (or 1 litre of freshly pressed cane juice)

To Serve

  • 2 whole limes, one juiced and one cut into wedges
  • 1 pinch fine sea salt (optional)
  • 1 kg crushed ice
  • 4 sprig mint, lightly bruised (optional)

Method

  1. Wash the cane stalks thoroughly under cold running water, scrubbing the joints, and dry them. Trim off the hard nodes at each end.
  2. Peel away the hard outer rind with a sharp heavy knife, working down the length of each stalk, and cut the pale inner cane into lengths that will pass through your press.
  3. Pass the cane through a cane press or a heavy-duty juicer two or three times, feeding the crushed fibre back through to extract the last of the juice. Strain the juice through a fine sieve or muslin.
  4. Stir in the lime juice and the pinch of salt if using, and taste. The lime is not a garnish: it cuts the flat sweetness and stops the juice tasting cloying.
  5. Fill tall glasses with crushed ice, pour over the guarapo, add a bruised mint sprig and a lime wedge, and serve at once.

Notes

Fresh cane stalks are sold by Caribbean, Latin American, and South and Southeast Asian grocers, usually in the winter months, and pressed juice is increasingly available frozen, which works perfectly here and needs only thawing and liming. Bottled and pasteurised cane juice is a different and much duller drink. For a guarapo con hielo y limón as sold in Havana, that is the whole recipe; elsewhere in the Caribbean and Latin America ginger, pineapple juice, or a pinch of cinnamon are added, and in Colombia the juice is often left to ferment for a day or two into a lightly alcoholic guarapo fermentado. A shot of white rum turns it into a very good long drink. The spent fibre, the bagasse, is what fuels the boiling house at a working mill and can go on the compost heap at home.

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