Foodstuffs

I dedicate this blog to my friends in food and drink at Vesta. Their newest venture, Steuben´s, opened this weekend on 17th avenue in Denver. Go eat there!

Food is one of the most important things in my life. I love cooking and eating and breaking bread with friends, both new and old. Obviously there are few better ways to learn about a culture than to share in the art of food. For this reason, travelling is a food lovers paradise, where everything you eat is new and exciting. Here´s my attempt to share some of it with you.

The variety of fruits alone in this part of the world is mind boggling. I´ve tried so many new fruits, as well as a few old favorites. Of course mango is ubiquitous around here. You can often pick them up off the ground where they´ve fallen from trees and eat them on the spot. In Katarina, outside of Managua, I peeled a mango with my teeth and ate it while I looked out over Laguna Apoya, a crater lake. The pineapple is also divine, you can buy it by the slice from street vendors. I may never forget the piña batida (kind of a milk shake) that I had one morning in Granada for breakfast. The papayas here are huge, bigger than a (U.S.) football. I ate a slice of fresh papaya on the streets of Bogotá, wasting time while waiting for Robert to arrive. It was perfectly ripe, sweet, and musky. Jugos naturales, fresh squeezed fruit juices, are available everywhere, but nowhere are they more popular than on the streets of the Colombian Caribbean coast, where you can choose from ten or twelve different types of fruit and they are made to order. Maracuyá is my favorite. It´s a green fruit that resembles a small gourd. The juice is orange...it tastes light, tangy and refreshing. On the stranger side, the níspero, which is a round, brown fruit the size of a small orange with musky,dark flesh tastes like mix between a banana and a fig, kind of. We had it in a fruit salad at a shorefront restaurant in Santa Marta, also on the Colombian Caribbean coast. Mamoncillos look like tiny little limes which grow in bunches, like grapes. You crack their rind in half with your teeth and suck out a marble-sized pit which is covered in a pink flesh with a sweet and slightly sour flavor. It´s slimy and a lot of work for not so much reward, but fun nonetheless. We ate a bag-full sitting on the stoop of our room one late afternoon at La Casa de Felipé, a hostel in Taganga, Colombia. My favorite strange fruit is the granadilla (grenade) which has a hard, gourd-like yellow skin. You cut them open and find a greyish batch of what looks like fish eyes. They are black seeds about the size of watermelon seeds, each covered in a slimy sweet mucus. You suck the whole mess out of the shell, crunching the seeds and savoring the juice. They are surprisingly refreshing and delightfully fun to eat. I had my first one in the colonial village which time forgot, Guane, after a 90 minute hike along the edge of a magnificent canyon in the eastern range of the Andes, outside of Baricharra, Colombia.

Speaking of fruit, the platano or green banana is a staple throughout Central and South America. I hardly ever ate a meal in Nicaragua without fried platanos. A strange thing has happened to me and my relationship with them. In Nicaragua I was so tired of fried platano I never wanted to see one again and ate them only drowned in chile sauce. Now in Colombia, where there is more variety, I find myself craving fried platano and am dissappointed if they don´t appear on my plate. Go figure. Fried platano chips...thin and crispy like potato chips rock too, and are usually made fresh locally. The other Nica staple, which I don´t miss quite as much is gallo pinto, red beans and rice which are served with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sometimes flavorful and delicious, other times bland and boring, but they fill you up and are a very important part of Nica culture. I haven´t had as many beans in Colombia, apparently they are only common in Medellín, but I have had lots of rice, the best being the Caribbean coconut rice...rice cooked in coconut milk which is as good as it sounds. Especially alongside fried snapper, which I picked out fresh, on the Playa Grande in Taganga.

On Isla Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua I also had fried fish while waiting for the bus to Merída. It was fresh from the lake, fried whole and covered in olive oil and garlic. Thanks to some advice from the woman who cooked it, I ate it with my fingers, which makes it so much easier to maneuver around the bones. I didn´t eat the head, but devoured the rest. It was hot and fresh and delicious. Speaking of Isla Ometepe, at the Hacienda Merída I was served two buffet meals a day which always included freshly baked whole grain bread, something very hard to come by in these parts. It was heavenly after so much Bimbo. They also served whole grain pancakes with breakfast, which I ate every day for four days, drizzled in honey. Yum. Of course there were always fresh tortillas in Nicaragua, corn of course, but in Colombia the arepa takes the place of the tortilla. The arepa is round and flat but thick. It´s fried corn meal sometimes filled with white cheese, an egg or sugar. They are heavy in your hand and divinely delicious.

Speaking of corn bread, I fear that I won´t ever taste again the beautiful corn bread which I had in Nicaragua. It resembles what we know as southern corn bread but not quite as crumbly,it´s mildly sweet and cake-like. During one long day of travel in Nicaragua, I bought some from a woman who was selling them on the bus. It was still warm and I can´t stop thinking about it.

I suppose that brings us to dessert, of which there is no shortage on this trip. One of my favorites is helado, in some cases natural frozen fruit juice, sometimes pre-fab ice cream treats made by Eskimo (think fudgesicle, dove bar, drumstick) but always cold and refreshing and always within arms reach. The coconut milk helado, fresh shaved coconut and coconut milk frozen into a popsicle in Villa de Leyva, Colombia probably takes the cake. After Villa de Leyva we found ourselves in another colonial village called Baricharra where they are known for making the famous Colombian dessert arequipe. Arequipe is milk pudding make with sugar and milk and panela. It´s like a soft, caramelly fudge you eat with a spoon (or a stick). I had a huge cup of it to myself one night. I thought at first there was no way I could eat the whole thing, but then it was gone...like magic. On the bus between Estelí and León in Nicaragua I had another coconut sweet...little finger shaped bars that were brown (cocoa) and hot pink. At the Humberto Huembes market in Managua, I had some sort of soft fry bread rolled into a cone and filled with pink frosting, topped with a cherry. In Nicaragua I had birthday cake in Somoto (my friend Anna´s daughter Clara´s 16th birthday) and Mother´s day cake in Sabalos, both were frosted in merengue. At Clara´s birthday lunch we also had homemade tacos, fresh-made tortillas stuffed with shredded chicken, seasoned in tomotao and onion and I think a little bit of cinnamon. They are eaten with repollo (shredded cabbage and beets) and chili sauce and I think I ate six. Finally, I have enjoyed countless ice cold beers, Toña in Nicaragua, Aguila in Colombia. The rum in Nicaragua, Flor de Caña, is delicious with some lime and the aquardiente, Colombia´s fire water is anise flavored. I could keep going and going...

There are still so many things I look forward to trying as we make our way around Colombia. I saw a street vendor last night in Santa Marta selling plates of sliced hot sausage and cheese with a spicy cream sauce, which I must try before we leave and now, it´s time for a cafe con leche, ¡adios!