Tobacco Cuisine On Display At Cuba Cigar Festival

HAVANA (AP) – Tobacco: It’s what’s for dinner. A team of Croatian chefs has whipped up a pungent meal that infuses the flavor of tobacco leaf into baked stone bass filets, bread and butter, a rich demi-glace sauce, even ice cream. The result is a tangy heat that one taster likens to ancho chili powder, and a powerful finish with all the nicotine kick of a chubby Montecristo cigar.

Grgur Baksic is owner and executive chef of the Gastronomadi dinner club in Zagreb. He led Thursday’s demonstration before a standing-room-only crowd of aficionados as part of Havana’s 15th annual Cigar Festival. It’s a six-day bash that attracts hundreds of cigar sophisticates from around the world and culminates Saturday with a nighttime gala and auction of humidors worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.