So, if you scroll down on my original blog page, you may or may not have noticed a link out to our Peace Corps Colombia recipe blog. Which is pretty fantastic. But since I spend an inordinate amount of time buying, cooking, researching, and thinking about food...I thought I'd start a personal page on it. Just in case anyone reading this blog might also happen to be a fellow foodie. And also so my mother can stop commenting on the amount of normal posts revolving around food...I figure I'll just get it all out of my system here :)
A little bit about food, my interpretation of it, and how it works cooking in Colombia:
Cooking is an activity that, from living in a co-op in college, to cooking for my friends as a break from our corporate jobs last year, has kept me sane. No place holds happier, more wholesome memories than the Madison Farmers Market on the capital square, with its products ranging from fresh beets to tomatoes to asparagus to apple cider to chocolate chip pumpkin bread to strawberries to amazing cheese...I'd better stop or I'll just pack up and move right back in time for spring!
Here in Colombia, cooking becomes a tad more difficult. Ingredients are hard to find. "Fresh" is sometimes non-existent (as in, getting to tasty but affordable vegetables often requires digging through maggot-infested produce boxes at the neighborhood veggie store), but frozen is not an option and canned foods are out of our price range. Gas stove ranges are lit with matches half the width of toothpicks, ovens are used as storage cupboards, and pots are most commonly made out of thin, dented aluminum.
And yet, not-cooking would also be devastating! Fortunately, there are some other wonderful people here who love to cook. And so, starting during training, we sort of incidentally formed the Barranquilla Baking Crew. Yes, we named ourselves...But as part of our de-stressing/socializing fun, we starting making things that were either exceedingly healthy, or exceedingly unhealthy, non-Colombian foods, in order to devour large quantities in total bliss. Because somehow, despite the above difficulties, we've managed to cook up food that is not just delicious in our living context, but by our (admittedly slightly lowered standards) would taste pretty delicious anywhere!
About food in general: In terms of food, for me taste has always been far more important than presentation. I love comfort food, but without the connotation of butter and cream and potatoes that often comes with that. Instead, "comfort food" here translates to no-frills, fancy-free cooking that involves tasty things that can be cooked easily, with lots of vegetables, and don't require measuring cups. Since I went vegetarian about a year prior to coming to Colombia, vegetables have been a particular passion. (Of course, here I eat chicken and occasionally hot dogs, because they are not considered meat and since animal products are pretty much unavoidable here, well, so it goes...)
So here are some scrollable recipe-cum-stories from kitchen-time that I'll probably just keep adding to. And if you can make/afford food in Colombia, you can make/afford it anywhere!
**you may notice that if things are made in ovens, they have no temperatures. That's because that concept doesn't really exist here...anywhere from 350-425 is probably a good guess in the states!
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August, 2012
Welp, it's been a while on this end of things. One of these days I may switch to wordpress to give me better blog flexibility...but until then, a few more recipes, added in ugly fashion right on top of the others. This due to my mother's behest that I make my blog more Colombia-interest rather than Emily-is-obsessed-with-food-so-check-it-out. I guess things in life do well with topics. Anyway. I've done cooking. In an effort to stop snacking on random things like storebought bread, I've taken over the kitchen at night, when most of the family is doing other things like watching Colombia's version of Big Brother, or something like a 2 hour version of ONLY the physical challenge part of Survivor (both of which, in my opinion, would do well by increasing montage-sequences, as seeing the same rope ladder climbed a hundred times in a row is not all that thrilling. That's just my opinion though)
Anyway. I've been cooking more. It's been lovely. I bought a steamer. I bought my own pot. (This highly confused my family, as they have a huge outdoor shelf of them. However, the supply is of a fluid nature, since everything gets lent out to family and friends on a regular basis..you never know if you'll have the pot that has a well-fitting lid, or if you'll be stuck shaking popcorn in an aluminum blob that has a pot-like resemblance with two balled up rags as oven mits, hoping your family doesn't catch the expletives flying from your mouth as the top slips and slides, burning your popcorn and hands alike). Anyway. Cooking possessions...and a little consistency in life...make me happy.
Meanwhile, may I report that I made my FIRST pot of non-instant brown rice ever. It actually came out fine. Sort of exciting. (Rice...has been my cooking unicorn for years. Don't ask me why. I think it has to do with the fact it actually requires measuring, and though it's of the most basic sort, I still can't quite wrap my head around that....)
List of dishes, recipes to follow:
-beet barley
-butternutsquash with apples and caramelized onions
-teriyaki stirfry
-ricotta dip
-no-bake pumpkin cookies
-honey kettle corn (see real blog, oops)
-black beans and rice
-white beans with rosemary
BEET BARLEY
One thing that has turned me on to taking the effort to cook rice and/or barley (other than the fact I actually really like rice, if it's not made the Colombian style which involves frying the uncooked grains in oil and salt before boiling to greasy perfection), is that I can use my steaming basket, which in my case sits on top of the pot, to steam veggies at the same time. And lacking an oven, there's not much better than steamed beets :)
In this case, I threw some barley into the pot and sliced beets on top and set it to boil and then to simmer, heading back to my room for a quick nap. About 30 minutes later, I get this frantic tapping on the wall by my room, my host brother calling, "Emily!" He doesn't say a word, just points with bulging eyes at the kitchen.
There, my pot was steaming over a bit. But since there were beats on top, the water coming out was crimson. I couldn't help laughing. "Don't worry, it's just remolachas (beets)!" I told him. He walked away. Came back a few minutes later. Spat out, "Verduras" (vegetables) in disapproving disdain. My host brothers don't nurture warm feelings towards vegetables on the good days. Apparently they don't take well to vegetable scares :)
Anyway, the unexpected part of this whole thing was that I got beet barley, since my water was a little too high, and the beet juices boiled into the grain. Which made, with the addition of garlic, salt, and pepper, an incredible almost risotto, the beet sugars and barley starch caramelizing into sweet earthiness. It's good hot or cold
Ingredients: Beets, Barley, Savory spices al gusto (cumin, salt, pepper, garlic powder). A squirt of lime would probably be amazing.Wish I'd thought of it then...
Method: If you're doing this intentionally, get water boiling with your barley. about 15 minutes in, throw in chopped beets and spices. Boil until everything is done, about an hour total. Serve hot or cool with a squirt of lime.
BUTTERNUT SQUASH, with CARAMELIZED ONIONS AND APPLES
No great story, just that this is delicious. Make sure you caramelize the onions :)
Ingredients:
-squash
-2 big white onions
-4 apples, chopped/sliced.
-garlic, 2+ cloves
-pepper, cumin, salt, curry, paprika, could add a touch of ginger. I like to boil a hunk of ginger with my brown rice for a double layered taste
-brown rice or barley
Method: Chop and then steam your squash on top of brown rice. You can add some spices to the rice and squash while this is going, or throw them in later. Slice onions into thin long slices. Throw them in a pot with a little olive oil and start to sautee, making sure you keep the heat pretty low so you don't fry them. Adding a tsp or two of salt and a little balsamic vinegar at this point speeds up the process and adds tastiness The idea is to get them to turn transluscent and then golden. Add in crushed garlic. Cover and cook, stirring often enough that they don't burn, turning down the heat as they reduce. It will take about 20 minutes for them to be at the earliest point of caramelization you want, before you add the apples.
When I cut my apples, I make slices the long way, and then cut those slices the thin way, so you end up with thin triangles. Add these, cover and cook until softened but still tangy.
Meanwhile, when the squash is tender take it out and mash it roughly. Season with cumin, curry, paprika, even cayenne, until it's spiced to your liking. Mix with the apple and onion mixture and serve over your ginger rice. Amazing as a side dish or if you're as into veggies as I am, a main one.
BLACK BEANS AND RICE
I used to do this with canned black beans and canned tomatoes. Add an onion, garlic, green pepper, some instant rice...you've got yourself a pretty no-hassle meal. Welp, I'm in the Peace Corps now..So we do dried beans, real rice, and a whole bunch of tomatoes from the local veggie shop. The owners call me mi reina (my queen) and bag my veggies for me (this is normal treatment for anyone who walks in, just as a disclaimer), so things could be worse.
Also, a fun part of my cooking life includes our lime tree outside. Here, limes are smaller than golf balls. They are called "limones" and there are no yellow versions. Lime trees give limes ALL YEAR. I love lime. It's rainy season, which means we currently have a huge broasting pan full of limes in our kitchen. Lime trees... = happiness.
Quick tangent (isn't that what this all is, at this point...) on dried beans...they are cheap. They also require advanced planning. They also increase your cooking times by a thousand. Unless you have an amazing friend like I do, who, since she a) knows I get a limited time in my kitchen and b) is the best person in the world, boils beans for me. We have a barter system going on. Anyway. This recipe assumes you have beans that are at the cooking point of either exiting a can or having been boiled already.
Ingredients:
-2 cups blackbeans
-4 tomatoes, medium sized
-one large onion
-one green pepper
-one red pepper
-at least 2 cloves of garlic (or teeth of garlic, as we call them here)
-pepper, paprika, cumin, salt, lots of lime
Method: A wide shallow pot works best for this. Saute chopped onion and garlic in olive oil, then add peppers and saute as well. Add chopped tomatoes and let cook, covered, just a minute or two. Then add water and beans--water until it just covers everything. Bring to boil and then reduce to a simmer, and simmer to desired consistency. Add spices. If you're planning on a beans-and-rice meal, let simmer down until thick. You can also eat this as a soup, but if you're doing that, you'll probably want to add some sort of stock or extra spices.
Serve over rice with plenty of lime and hot sauce if you have it/like it for kick. This is the best in the world: http://www.savoryaccents.com/products/blended-chilies-hot-sauce/
WHITE BEANS AND ROSEMARY
As friend Jessica would say, mocking me, "just add rosemary and it'll be delicious!" I'm not sure why she has to mock me...since it's true. And whitebeans are the perfect receptacle. I think this would be really good on pita bread or carrots or crackers, sort of like hummus. I just...never got that far, mixed it instead with steamed carrots and devoured.
Ingredients:
-white beans
-garlic
-rosemary
-touch of salt and pepper
Method: Boil the beans until soft. If you're starting from normal dried then cooked stage, or canned, cook maybe 30 minutes more, with rosemary and garlic, and a little salt and pepper, in water that goes up a little higher than covering them. When water is gone, mash the beans. Perhaps puree them, though a fork does really well. Use...as you wish. A side dish for something like a pork chop. On a sandwich...Perhaps with a mild white cheese, avocado and tomato and bacon? A dip for raw carrots. Yeah. all of those are options...if it lasts that long.
SWEET RICOTTA DIP
Did you know, it's super easy to make ricotta. Huh. Google it. Milk and cream and vinegar, a cheesecloth and there you go. Found that out after I bought some at the super fancy mall (only 5 mil!)...but cheese making here could get a little dicey, anyway, since it involves letting it sit out for an hour or so to drain and well...in a hundred degree heat I'm not sure how that goes. Or rather, I do. It turns into queso costeno, which is something like a physical miracle given its staying power. It has a salty tang and rubbery texture (I've heard it compared to feta...but that just makes me sad), and people sell it in tire-sized wheels on the streets without concern for sun or heat. This is not usually what I'm looking for in a good ricotta.
Anyway, I had a craving, like the good Italian 3rd-generation-er I am. To a half pound of ricotta I added about a tablespoon of honey and cinnamon to taste (I think in good quality cinnamon it'd be a few tspns, but I've lost all concept of how to use quality spices), blending it all in a chopper to make it creamy and sweet.
Serve over graham crackers and top with sliced strawberries. Or just dip strawberries straight in.
NO-BAKE PUMPKIN BALLS
I got this idea from Chocolate-Covered Katie, which is a blog where a disturbingly thin girl offers up healthy dessert recipes. Which I stumbled across looking for a cookie dough that uses no eggs...thinking I'd eat it plain in lieu of having an oven. She does this cool thing with chickpeas that I have yet to try. But I had this other craving for pumpkin things, and in typical fashion looked for ways to creatively eat pumpkin without an oven.
-keep in mind when I say pumpkin, I'm using basically orange squash. We think the squash here is a certain kind of hybrid, since they call it all by the same name and, more tellingly, it's sold in the same boxes for the same price. It ranges from squash that look like pumpkins, to things shaped like pumpkins but are tan on the outside with deep ridges, to butternut squash shape. they are generally orange on the inside. I am losing touch on what a butternut squash, as classified in the US, tastes like, but my last squash appeared butternut-y, but had a sort of pumpkin-like smell. Anyway.
I've had this oatmeal craving, lately. (Bear with me, we'll circle back). I like making it in the PC office with soy milk and cinnamon and a touch of salt, often soup-y so it's a warm and comforting gruel in the ridiculous air conditioning they pipe into the office. It's also cheap and filling and I hear it's good for your heart, or something...I don't know. But turns out it can also become a sort of substitute for quick breads. When you're really desperate. And have spent almost a year with no oven. Or apparently some people do it just for fun. Whichever the case, here I've done carrot oatmeal and zucchini oatmeal. It's pretty good. Adding things like flax seed for texture helps. Nuts would probably be delicious too...and brown sugar is always good.
Next stop, pumpkin oatmeal, right?! Except, I wanted more. See, I have this thing with pumpkin cookies. And pumpkin bread. They might be my favorite dessert in the world. At the farmers market in Madison it was not a rare sight to see me double fisting a loaf of chocolate chip pumpkin bread with a cream-cheese frosted chocolate chip pumpkin cookie.
Anyway. In comes Chocolate Covered Katie, where I found a recipe for pumpkin balls. I took the idea and ran with it.
Ingredients:
-half an orange squash (or, you know...a can of pumpkin puree)
-3 cups quick oats
-vanilla extract
-pinch of salt
-2 tbsp hot chocolate mix or cocoa, optional
-2 tbsp soy milk or regular milk
-sugar or honey to taste...probably around a third of a cup of either.
-lots of cinnamon and/or if you have it, I'd imagine pumpkin pie spice would be heavenly
Method: Blend 1 cup of oats in blender to make oat flour. Throw in a bit of hot chocolate mix or cocoa powder if you're into chocolate and pumpkin. If you're using a whole squash, steam until soft. Throw into a blender with vanilla and honey and milk cinnamon. You may need 2 batches to fit it all. In other bowl, mix flour and 2 cups oats and salt, and if you're doing regular sugar add it there. Add puree to dry ingredients and mix. Chill until it's firm enough to roll into balls. I'd imagine these would be super good drizzled with chocolate sauce and/or rolled in mini chocolate chips and/or topped with chocolate.
It's not farmers market pumpkin cookies. It's not. But especially after a night of sitting, it's tasty and pumpkin-y and quick and maybe even a little healthy. You know...like pumpkin oatmeal. But much more like a cookie. :)
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MERMELADA
Jam (or in Spanish, mermelada), was never something I was passionate about in the States. It was tasty eaten with peanutbutter, but that usually meant that bread was required, as well as the motivation to interrupt the natural path of spoonful-of-peanutbutter to mouth with sandwich creation. I think my only fond memories of pre-Colombian jam was that of organic blueberry jam bought in conjunction with almond butter from the Co-Op grocery store in Hanover, NH, spread on locally-made honey-whole-grain bread that was lightly toasted and eaten as a finals study break snack...mmm.
Here, however, jam making has become a go-to activity. Partially because homemade jam is incredibly delicious, partially because it's easy to make, and partially because it gives the illusion of being healthier than eating candy, even while it satisfies sweet cravings. And it goes deliciously on homemade bread. Also on cheesecake. Yes, we have made cheesecake in Colombia. Twice in one month.
Turns out, jam making is ridiculously simple. What do you do to make jam?
Ingredients:
-at least 2 cups of your favorite fruit. (here, we favor mora, which is some yet-to-be-determined variety of blackberry, raspberry, and/or mulberry. Guava, mango, banana, and strawberry are all close seconds in my book).
-1/2 - 1 cup of sugar, depending on acidity of fruit
-lime juice (here, we use the juice of one of the ubiquitous lemon-lime crosses--there are not different words for them here, but the fruits themselves are green--that are about the size of a ping-pong ball. Every household owns the most awesome lime-juicer contraption ever, which looks like a nutcracker except it's a super-effective juicer.)
-a little bit of water
Directions:
-Clean fruit to individual pickiness-- leaves won't kill you, but sticks might. If you're finicky, you'd do best blending said fruit and straining it, but it will really only affect texture rather than taste. Boil fruit for about 10 minutes in a saucepan to size with the lime juice. (The lime is not for flavor, it makes the jam thicken). Add sugar to taste, and then cook until the jam is almost as thick as you'd want it to be. It will continue to thicken as it cools.
Something to note is that this isn't jarring-jam. This is jam that has to be kept in the refrigerator with the top off, or it turns into liquid. But it still stays good for at least two weeks! (that's the longest it's taken for me to consume my portion...)
Other notes on jam:
--make sure, if you're using a thin pot, to stir often. Sugar burns quickly! Probably won't ruin the taste of your jam, but it might make you the laughing stock of your family and/or leave you scrubbing a pot for the next half hour to get the char out.
-Adding banana to your jam will give it a slight taste of banana, which some find delicious. More importantly, it is a cheap way to bulk up the volume of jam. If you do this, add the lime juice to the bananas to stop them from browning, and add the banana about 20 minutes into cooking.
STOVE-TOP BREAD
Before coming to Colombia, I didn't so much make bread or do much baking. I more lived in awe of those able to do it. Quick breads were experimented with, but they involved scary things like measuring cups. And oven-time, which meant cookie attempts invariably became coal lumps in the oven.
Turns out, you can actually make quick breads without too much measuring or precise cooking time, and can even do fun things like substitute some granola for flour and get *gasp* some fiber/flavor into your starch...which very much endears them to me. And baking cookies with chocolate pudding mix is about the cheapest way to get a brownie-like fix taken care of down here.
But that's a whole other story. This post is (supposed to be) about stove-top bread. Because when we volunteers scattered and moved to our new houses, we received the devastating news that out of all of the dedicated BAQ Bakers left in the city, not a single one of us moved to a house with a working oven(!).
But we are intrepid individuals if nothing else. And, in our somewhat cushy living situations, we may or may not have reasonably-paced internet. And so what did we discover? Stove-top bread! Officially this is based off of a recipe for Irish Soda Bread Farls. However, we Colombian-a-fied it a little bit, meaning we don't roll dough into pretty pieces, nor do we use buttermilk. The best part about this recipe for us is that, although it is not made in the oven, neither does it involve dropping dough into a hot pan of oil to cook. (*gasp* Something made without oil or butter? It can't be true!)
Ingredients:
-2 cups flour
-1 cup yogurt
-1 tsp baking soda
-1/2 tsp salt
Directions:
-Mix together dry ingredients, then add yogurt. Heat and then flour a large, hot frying pan on medium heat. Take a pinch to a mound of dough, whatever size you prefer, pinch an end of it, and flatten it into whatever shape that ends up being about half an inch thick. Lay it on the pan, and cook for a few minutes until one side is browned. Pick it up, flip, and repeat.
When done, this almost has the taste/texture of na'an. It also goes excellently with jam. Next stop--experimenting with stuffing it!
Update-3/24/12
We have since stuffed this, augmented this, made it with buttermilk (aka milk cut with limes from the back patio lime tree), made it with oat flour, and eaten it with just about everything possible.
Favorite combinations include: spinach and rosemary, bran and flax, and garlic. Pretty much delicious any way you want it, and always simple and delicious.
Now, the next thing we learned is that if you add an egg, a little bit of oil, and a half cup of sugar, you start to get into the pancake/scone ballpark. Strawberry yogurt with chopped up strawberries = little fluffs of strawberry pancake/scone/muffin heaven!
CHEESECAKE
Yeah, that's right. Cheesecake. So, cheesecake does not in the slightest meet the requirements of "being cheap to make" here. However, myself and a fellow volunteer got to talking about its virtues, and then decided to make it for his former, my current host sister's birthday. And then it was such a hit that we made it again for our goodbye party at the office. The cheesecake is something I started making as a treat for a college friend. And then quickly realized that not only did it look impressive, it was refreshingly simple to make--and exact measurements and cooking times were really not an issue. Foolproof!
It also works super well in Colombia, because they have "Queso Crema" here--cream cheese--as well as a ridiculous love of caramel, which is sold by the tubfull and takes over about three shelves in the baking aisle--which conveniently makes a delicious topping for said cheesecake. We also proved the foolproof aspect nicely when the recipe was misinterpreted by a new cheesecake baker, who added butter to the cake part. No one (except perhaps our arteries) was the wiser!
*This recipe is based off a pretty popular one on the internet that was some runner up in a Nestle competition. It also makes two goodsize cheesecakes, which is great for being able to vary the topping options :)
Ingredients:
Cake:
-About 1000 grams of cream cheese, or queso crema
-4 eggs
-1-2 cups sugar
-2 tspns vanilla extract
-juice from 1-3 little limes
Crust:
-2 packs of oreo-like cookies
-1 cup of butter
Topping:
-caramel
-homemade strawberry jam--see above for recipe :)
Directions:
-Cream together cake ingredients. If you're using state-side cream cheese, soften it first for better ease of mixing (and probably use one less egg since the cream cheese has a thicker consistency). Queso crema is nicely pre-softened. For the crust, find the nearest friend, bribe them with thoughts of cheesecake, and have them crush all the cookies. Mix the cookies with melted butter and press into the sides of a pyrex baking dish. Any size and shape works, we have found...although shallow v. bread-loaf style works the best. Pre-cook crust for a few minutes for best results.
If making the turtle cheesecake and are feeling spendy, buy some chocolate, melt it, and mix it into a few cups of batter. You can then swirl this with normal batter in that crust. Daub liberal amounts of caramel over the crust, and then pour alternate chocolate and plain cheesecake in. Cook for about an hour, or until the cheesecake sets and is golden on top (cover with foil and continue cooking if top browns too much. Then top with more caramel.
If you're going a little more "healthy" (HAH), leave off the caramel. Make some homemade strawberry jam, and spread that over the top.
Heaven.
HUMMUS
Turns out, chickpeas are easily available here. The trick is that canned chick peas are about five times as expensive as bagged ones. Or maybe even more. I don't really do math. But I do know they are far more expensive, and thus this recipe calls for dried garbanzo beans. For best results, dried beans should be soaked overnight, rinsed, and then boiled for an hour or so. Which means, when hummus is being craved, plan ahead!
If you somehow don't get your act together the night before, hummus you still can make. Just plan on boiling the beans for about an hour and a half to get them nice and plump, rinsing them, and then boiling them so they become soft for an hour more.
Why interrupt the cooking process, you ask? Well, rinsing beans helps to rise off the sugars that your body can't digest...which happens to be the reason that beans give you gas. Living in close quarters with families = must rinse your beans!
The other thing about making hummus is that it generally requires tahini--which is sesame seed paste, and gives the hummus a nice depth and flavor. Fun thing about "tahini" is that it's actually the word they use down here for hummus. However, the cheapest jar of tahini runs about 11 mil, aka 5 dollars, aka over half our daily salary...so in the spirit of adaptability, down here we just leave it out.
Not buying tahini means that five of us can stuff our faces on garlic-and-roasted-red-pepper-hummus, sliced carrots and cucumbers to the tune of about eight mil pesos (four-ish dollars), and still have almost half our batch of hummus leftover. Woohoo Peace Corps cooking!
Anyway...
Ingredients:
-bag of dehydrated garbanzos, about 500 g
-5 cloves (or teeth, as they call them here) of garlic
-2 red peppers, roasted or sauteed
-7 small lemon/limes, juiced--half a cup(?)
-1/2 to 1 cup of olive oil
-salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
-cook garbanzo beans as described above. While boiling, cook and cut up red peppers. Blend* in batches with other ingredients. It goes easiest if you start each batch with liquid and about half a cup of garbanzos with some garlic cloves, so that the garlic all gets thoroughly processed, and then add more garbanzo beans as you go. After all the batches are blended, salt and pepper to taste!
*although kitchens here don't have functioning ovens or almost any electrical appliances if you're not in an upper strata, every single family owns a blender. This is because people here do NOT drink plain water. Instead, almost every ounce of liquid that goes into their bodies--and by proxy, mine as well, now-- is flavored with sugar and fresh fruit pulp. Said sugar and fruit is often mixed with milk and/or ice cream rather than water. As a side note to my side note, I have tried drinking only water, but my family is so aghast at this idea that they no longer ask me what I "want" to drink, they simply serve me the liquified, sweetened fruit drink they make in fresh, multiple batches throughout the day. ...Ultimately, what this means in relation to this recipe is that no matter what, hummus can be made because there is always a blender!
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Other fun things:
Fried food!
You may have seen a few, or more, references to the ridiculous amounts of fried foods served here on the coast in my blog. In my training host family, my abuela didn't like to cook. This meant that most foods were either boiled or bought. As in, dinners included such entrees as boiled potato with a wedge of cheese. Or boiled green beans and carrots topped with grated cheese, served with a side of store-bought bread. (This was a good day). Or white bread (and it's ALWAYS white bread, here) with a thin slice of pungent, hotdog-reminiscent ham. Flavoring was reduced to raw onion, salt, and occasionally garlic. Suffice it to say, for someone who loves food, this was a tad (read: extremely) dissatisfying.
And so, having moved to a family that believes in cooking, my spirits have lifted hugely. However, the pitfall is that most things are cooked in a pot of hot oil. Including eggs. Is this how fried eggs are generally cooked? I mean, I know fried eggs exist. However, in my previous, other-than-scrambled-eggs-eggless existence, I never made one myself. But I certainly don't recall ever seeing an egg being served that resembled a sponge because of the hot oil pockets it garnered during frying. Now, these show up on my dinner plate with distinct regularity.
Just for fun, here are the foods that were on my first week's daily breakfast menu:
1) Empanadas:
Empanadas are most commonly made by shaping white corn flour dough into a circle, then folding it over ground meat and/or cheese and the pocket shut. They can be made with wheat flour dough as well, which gives them a tasty, crispy texture, but for some reason these are not as common. They resemble a pasty and/or crescent-shaped hotpocket, and are cooked by being dropped into a pot of oil to fry
2) Arepas:
Arepas can be made of white or yellow corn flour. Yellow corn flour, or mazorca, as they call it here, has a little more texture and is also sweeter. The dough can be made by simply adding water, or, as my family here likes to do it, by adding whole milk, egg, and cheese. When the dough is a nice, dumpling-like texture, it's patted into a hamburger-like round, and then griddle or deep-fried. When made in a pan, they are usually fried in butter
3) Patacones:
Patacones are made from green platano bananas. They are basically twice-fried bananas. They are made by first deep-frying a few-inch-long log of banana. After these pieces have been thoroughly oil-inundated, they are smashed into a thin disk. They are then fried again. In my house, they come with a side of fried cheese, although as I haven't seen this elsewhere, this seems to be simply a family touch.
4) Arepitas:
Arepitas, by linguistic standards, should simply be small arepas. And, by diameter, this is true. However, what they lack in girth, they make up in density; arepitas are smaller, ball-like creations that probably weigh in at a quarter pound or so and are deep fried.
5) Sweet fried dough:
I do not know if there is an actual name for this. It has been described to me as sweet fried dough. It tastes like someone took doughnut dough and deep fried it. Maybe twice. They are thinner, like an extra-dense funnel cake, minus the powdered sugar.
6) Fried scrambled eggs
I don't know how better to describe these, considering they're cooked in about 3/4 inches of oil. They do, however, often include bits of vegetables, which at least makes them a little bit healthy...right?!
Ultimately, there have been no un-fried options. To avoid a heart attack prior to close-of-service, something may need to be done about this...but what do you do when this is what the family eats on a daily basis?! The worrisome thing is that everything is actually delicious...so give it time, and maybe instead of worrying, I'll just be eating that second serving that is offered with every meal...
