Culinary Adventures

I’ve been looking forward to this year abroad for several reasons, but thought a major perk (in theory, mind you) of not working at a job outside the home would be having more time to spend in the kitchen.  In reality, the combo of 8 month old little man + new-to-me kitchen and appliances + exploring new recipes/ingredients has sometimes put a kink into my plans, but I’m learning as I go and enjoying the ride.

Typical Bolivian cuisine is quite tasty and often includes rice, beans of some sort, potatoes and a cut of meat.  Breakfast and dinner are usually the simpler meals (coffee, bread, cheese, and fruit) with lunch being the large, hearty meal of the day.  Most restaurants around town have a set lunch menu, including a soup/salad to start, main dish (meat/starch) and a small dessert to top it off.  The price for lunch is usually quite reasonable (20-30Bs = $3-4 dollars) and we’ve enjoyed trying out different restaurants together while Jason is on lunch siesta.  There is no shortage of street food vendors around town and most are selling either salteñas (dough pocket with meat and potatoes inside) or empanadas (fried dough pocket with various fillings, most often cheese.)  Both are delicious, especially during the morning hours when they’re the most fresh.

Since we’re not spending more than three months in any one place during this year (and often less than that) I was a little uncertain how it would be to stock a pantry and keep spices/essentials on hand.  Having nothing here to start with besides a small container of salt, we kept it simple for the first few days…bread, fruit, eggs, canned tuna, etc.  However, we quickly tired of toast and bananas three times a day, so we made a master list and then a larger grocery run.  We must have been quite entertaining…me with a long list and the cart attempting to decipher all the Spanish labels and prices while Jason juggled Eli and translated. 

The conundrum I’ve found with moving to a new locale is: should I keep making recipes I always have, regardless of the price/availability of ingredients?  Or do I ‘go native’ and cook with the cheapest, most accessible items?  So far, it’s been a little of both, although more of the latter (thank you, More with Less and Simply in Season.)  I’ve made quite a few bean (black, kidney, lentil) meals with brown rice and have also cooked up some chicken and ground beef.  Quinoa is widely available and reasonably priced as are most fruits and vegetables.  There are over 200 varieties of potatoes grown in Bolivia and we’ve been rather overwhelmed at the market with the amount of large bins/bags filled with various types.  We discovered last week it can be somewhat challenging to ask about specific kinds.  Finding a large bin with large, oblong reddish potatoes, we asked the lady if they were batatas (sweet potatoes.)  “Si, Si! Cuantos quieren?” was the instant reply, and we bought a kilo.  While scrubbing them back at home, I became suspicious they weren’t actually sweet potatoes and upon peeling them, found regular, soft white potato flesh beneath the peel.  Doing more research, we discovered sweet potatoes are actually called camotes here.  Ahh, the joys of a new language. We’ll try again at next week’s market.

We purchase most of our fruits and veggies at the market on the weekend and do the rest of our shopping at small grocery stores.  Each time we go to the grocery store, we seem to find more exciting items originally thought to be unavailable (brown sugar! flour tortillas! cocoa powder!) but are often aghast at the prices of such imports.  Many imported items here come from Brazil, or if they’re from the states, they’re manufactured in Miami and have labels printed in both Spanish and English (peanut butter, for example.)  The one exception so far has been brown sugar…the entirely English printed SurFine brand bag hails all the way from Skokie, IL. 

Our kitchen here is small but quite well-stocked, dishes/utensil-wise. As is typical in hot, muggy climates, there is rarely a time when I’m in the kitchen that I don’t see several tiny ants, clambering on the counters or sink.  If any type of fruit/sweet mess if left out, they come in droves.  I am learning to squish them with whatever finger I have free and move along.  I had assumed a gas stove would be the norm and was rather excited, having had one in our house in Albuquerque.  I loved the instant heat.  This stove top is certainly no exception, but even with the nice little temperature controls, it seems to only have two basic temps: Really Crazy Hot and Hotter Still.  The first week I scorched two separate pots of food (rice and stewed apples for Eli) and have since mainly cooked on the two back burners, which are the smallest and therefore scorch our food more slowly.  The ironic part was the oven: it took double the time suggested to bake anything, and sometimes longer.  In a small kitchen, located in the middle of the apartment, in 90+ degree summer temps (despite A/C), this was not good news.  However, earlier this week I finally achieved baking success when the streusel coffee cake baked for the allotted 30 minutes and turned out perfectly.  Next up on the baking docket: brownies.  We’ll see how they turn out.