Yuca con Mojo

Cassava was the staple crop of the Taino, the indigenous people of the Caribbean, well before 1492 — though the plant itself is not native to the Caribbean: Manihot esculenta was domesticated in the southwestern Amazon (modern Brazil/Bolivia) over 10,000 years ago and spread north to the Antilles. The mojo dressing, by contrast, is Canary Islander, brought to Cuba by settlers from the islands in the 17th–18th centuries. The Canarian red mojo is a garlic-vinegar-paprika sauce (the name traces to Portuguese molho, 'sauce'); the Cuban version dropped the paprika and leaned on bitter (Seville) orange, which grew well in the colony. The last-minute pour of smoking oil over raw garlic is a Cuban refinement.

Taíno cassava under a Canary Islander dressing — paprika dropped, sour Seville orange in. Smoking-hot oil hits raw garlic at the table for one second at 180°C+ to deactivate alliinase, locking the flavor at pungent-but-not-bitter. Cooking the garlic from cold would brown it — wrong direction.

Boiled cassava chunks, soft and starchy, drowned in mojo — raw garlic crushed with sour orange juice (or lime + orange), olive oil, salt, hit with a ladle of just-smoking oil at the table so the garlic blooms. Sharp, oily, garlicky. Eaten with roast pork or as its own plate. The cassava should yield to a fork but not turn to mush; rubbery yuca is undercooked.

Pouring smoking oil on raw garlic at the last minute is chemistry, not theater. Raw garlic's allicin is harsh and short-lived; brief high-heat contact (a second or two of 180°C+ oil) deactivates the alliinase enzyme, locking the flavor at the pungent-but-not-bitter stage. Cooking the garlic in the pan from cold instead would brown and sweeten it — wrong direction.