Meal 54: El Salvador
After a three-week trip to India, where our senses were entranced with spices, I was afraid that Salvadorean food would prove mild and uninteresting. While it’s true that pupusas are a pretty straightforward food, I was surprised by the creative combination of ingredients, such as aged cheese in dessert, cloves in a soup, and coriander seed in a drink. While the food of this small, dense, Pacific-facing nation shares most of its base ingredients with its Latin American neighbors, a ...
Meal 52: Ecuador
Ecuador is kind of on the small side — a bit larger than the UK, a bit smaller than Nevada — but its borders contain three distinct zones: seaside, Andes, and Amazon. Hence, there’s quite a lot of variety in the foods available. (There’s also Galápagos way out in the Pacific, but we’re not eating any of their rare wildlife.) Some of the major themes are shared with its Andean neighbors: abundant potatoes, warming foods, and the ubiquitous Inca Kola, ...
Meal 51: Dominican Republic
Another Thanksgiving weekend, another nosh in San Francisco! To go with the gorgeous weather, the calendar aligned on Dominican Republic, the second-largest country of the Caribbean. While the Bay Area is no stranger to foods from Spanish-speaking lands, there’s few Caribbeans around, so these dishes made for something more of a novelty here than they would have been in Dominican-immigrant-heavy New York. Thanks to the kind folks at Hattery, I had a big kitchen to discover the intriguing Dominican way ...
Meal 50: Dominica
Dominica is a tiny little island country, in the middle of that north-south string of Caribbean islands. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the Spanish-speaking half of Hispaniola, but no, that’s the Dominican Republic. They both use the adjective Dominican; to assert that you mean this beautiful, actively volcanic, lush-in-parts island, place the stress on the third syllable, domiNIcan. The national Dominican dish is the so-called Mountain Chicken, which is actually a species of giant frog, so tasty and easy to ...
Meal 44: Cuba
A friend who’s been to Cuba suggested that “for many Cubans, food at the moment is state-issued ham sandwiches, which you could approximate with some layers of wet cardboard standing in for bread, and finely shaved erasers for the ham, all encased in a blister pack of clear cellophane.” Our guest Tennessee reported that by far the most disgusting food she’s had in her life was “street pizza” in Havana, during her time as a student there. Fortunately, we were able ...
Meal 39: Costa Rica
Our travels have taken us to Laura’s parents’ place on the shores of beautiful Lake Josephine on Anderson Island, Washington. How lovely to hit our one-year mark of Noshing, and make it 20% of the way through the nations, amongst the pine trees, outdoor, during a break in the rain! Costa Rican food, as I remember it from visiting there in eighth grade, is very simple and straightforward, with one distinctive aspect: Salsa Lizano. For a Tico, the colloquial name ...
Meal 35: Chile
Chile has gone through a nutritional upheaval in the past half century. Whereas a few decades ago malnourishment was a worry, now their obesity levels are in the same league as the US. With flaky pastries and tasty breads, it’s easy to see where the temptation lies. For this long Memorial Day weekend, we shook things up by heading up to the Catskills. Our friend Sarah-Doe spent much of her childhood in this big, rambling structure, a former grain mill ...
Meal 30: Canada
Laura is Canadian, Monday was her birthday, and we’re at the beginning of the C’s. That’s a recipe for a Canadian blowout party! For eight hours we fried, drank, and sang our way through the Great White North. We went through the better part of twenty pounds of potatoes, five pounds of cheese curds, a gallon of gravy, and every last bottle of wine in the house. Let’s be honest, this isn’t a collection of dishes you’d likely find on ...
Meal 24: Brazil
Brazil is a hugely diverse country both geographically and demographically. Well, first, it’s just huge, ranking #5 for both land area and population. The geography spans from the depths of the Amazon jungle to tropical shores (over 4,500 miles’ worth!) to temperate cattle-grazing lands. Its people come from all over, and of course brought their foods with them: Africans brought palm oil and okra, Europeans contributed pastry and cattle, the local lands provide manioc and all manner of fruit. (Also, ...
Week 21: Bolivia
Laura and I went to Bolivia for part of our honeymoon. It is telling of our unremarkable culinary experience that I can’t find any representative photos of the food there, but we did take our favorite photo ever at the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat: The one food that we do remember distinctly is pique macho, which is essentially meat and hot dogs on top of french fries. But that would require frying. Again. Much as I ...