Monday, February 22, 2010

Chocolate without Cheese?

Is like love without kisses they say in Ecuador. You dump the cheese into the hot chocolate and it melts to form a gooey mass you can eat with the spoon.

You can have it with cream instead (or in addition to) if you want. But the cream has a very thick consistency.
The harder drink is this vat of canalazo. Which is a cinnamon infused naranjilla (something like parsimmon) cider that they spike with aguardiente (sugar cane alcohol).
They order pitchers of it and drink it hot because this rainy season seems to be their winter. You can also get blackberry.
It was "cold" because we were in the mountains in the capital Quito.
They make a big deal about Serranos and Costenos having problems with each other but the costal food is eaten up here.
Cheviche is very popular. You can just have a big bowl of it for lunch just in its juices.
They also take corvina, fry it and serve it on top of a bowl of ceviche. I got mine with rice instead, but they put a bowl of ceviche on the side anyway.
Kendra is enjoying guanabana juice with it.

The mountains have their own fish cuisine though with river trout (trucha).
But up here they mainly eat potatoes and plantains.
You can see that the best way to give the plantain flavor is to let it sit in goat fat all day.
These are fried and stuffed with cheese.

They mash a potato into a ball called llapingachos.
The best way to give it flavor is to cover it in greasy eggs and chorizo.

The most simple dish is this mix of beans, lime, plantain chips, corn nuts, salsa... called cevichocho.Anthony Bourdain is doing a show on Ecuador next week (biter). I will guarantee that he eats guinea pig or cuy, which is a popular highland food. The guinea pig is a rodent and not a pig. Here is pig served on the streets of Quito.
Much tastier.