Food (part II)

The ciusine in the Ecuadorian coast is very tasty. It relies on fresh fish caught early in the morning (you can see the housewives and the cooks buying it early in the morning in a colourful noisy show).

The best known dish is ceviche. In Europe the kind of ceviches we can find are cooked in the Peruvian style. There is always the discussion about which country owns the authorship of this dish. Ceviche is in fact a way of cooking using lime, red onion, tomato and coriander, all them finely chopped. I have tried all sorts of ceviches, every place seemed to have their own way of preparing ceviche. There are ceviches of prawn (camarón), fish, clams (concha), crab... The ceviche de camarón is by far my favourite (better even with a freshly cooked chifles - thin slices of plantain deep fried in oil)
After two spectacular failures (one of them involving a large part of my partner's family) it seems as if I've come up with the right recipe. I have doubts about how ortodox it is, but in fact the outcome is really succulent. I've got the recipe from the blog of a female Ecuadorian migrant in the US (http://laylita.com/recipes/). It is worth having a look around as it is packed with beautiful pictures.

Another of my favourite Ecuadorian coastal dishes is fish in peanut sauce. I ate it in a small restaurant in the touristic village of Puerto Lopez, and it was absolutely delicious in its simplicity (no photos of it I´m afraid as the street lights went off at dinner time, as usual).

Food, of course, what else? (part I)

Ecuador is geographically divided in three well differentiated areas: the coastal stripe, the Andean highlands and the Amazon. Unfortunately I have nothing to say about the food in the Amazon as I haven´t been there yet. The foodways strictly follow those physical divisions. Available foodstuffs are very different, even the staples. Rice is the key food everywhere, as a cheap and nutritious side ingredient.

But let´s start talking about food in the Andean highlands, far less interesting in relation with flavour than its coast counterpart, but more symbolically loaded.

Corn is the symbolic foodstuff par excellance. There are lots of different kinds of corn, many different ways of cooking it. Chicha is an alcoholic drink made of corn (originally chewed by women in special occasions, but not anymore), locally produced which is consumed in a number of special events. Morocho is another drink made of corn. It is a warm sweet milky drink incredibly comforting in the cold Andean evenings. I am still wondering how it is actually made. It seems every family has its own way of cooking morocho, and they keep it secret!

Bananas are another staple, both in the Andes and in the coast. It can be stewed, fried, boiled... It is incredibly versatile, especially because there are I don´t know how many different kind of bananas (most of them unknown in Europe). In this photo one of my favourite: patacones, smashed and fried plantain.

Talking about symbolic Andean foodstuffs, cuy is a must. It is guinea pig roasted and marinated in a redish sauce.

In this photo, a mixture between coast and highland dishes: encebollado (a tasty fish soup) and chaulafan (that reminds me of a hybrid between Chinese rice and paella).

to be continued...