A look at local food discoveries, whether it’s a particular dish or an ingredient, often with one or more recipes.
I have mention Sichuan pickles a few times over the years. The original recipe is a “quick pickle”, i.e., not fermented, made with thin wedges of spiced, seedless cucumbers that are flash pickled with boiling hot oil and vinegar. They’re one of my favorite accompaniments to Chinese food, and I’ve included them in classes we’ve offered… Read More Pickles of the Four Plains
Now and again in my writings here I’ve talked about one of our favorite root vegetables, the Ulluco, a.k.a., olluco, olloquito, illaco, melloco, papalisa, or ulluma. It’s not a potato, it’s a tuber, and it has a crunchy, slightly watery texture, similar to something like jicama, but with a very intense, earthy flavor. Today we’re… Read More U-Tuber
Continuing our exploration of the different types of chipas, we move on today, to the chipa guazú, or “big bread” in the indigenous Guarani language. This one feels less like a bread to me, simply because there’s no actual flour of any sort in it. On the other hand, as I talked about in my first post… Read More Qasa SaltShaker – The Big Chipa
“All my greasy meat dreams have come true. That’s good.” Anthony Bourdain, Off the Cuff: Paraguay My recent foray into the world of chipas has put Paraguay on my front burner. So when our next door neighbor, with whom we’ve been sharing meals once or twice a week during the pandemic, showed up at my… Read More Braised Qow
As I promised a couple of weeks ago, I’ll gradually start posting some of the other Chipa version recipes. This one is the original one I learned. I don’t know that this type has any special name of a particular type of chipa, it’s just sort of what seems to be the “classic”, albeit it’s probably a… Read More Qasa SaltShaker – Chipa “Classic”
Flash News: An announcement from our minister of tourism that domestic and international flights will resume somewhere in the middle of this month, probably between October 12th and 15th. With limitations, but those haven’t been announced. Still, a step in the re-opening our borders to the world direction! Okay, not THAT Pumpkin Spice…. My inspiration… Read More PumpQin Spice Shrimp
I’m going to keep using the “Q” until our president here not only declares that the quarantine is over, but makes that into an actual fact. Though he’s stated now, for a month or more that “there is no quarantine”, and indeed we have some freer movement and more things open, there are still so… Read More Qajun Inspiration
I was taking a walk – something that slowly we’re able to go out and do more and more. I was passing by one of my favorite little gourmet shops and decided to pop in and just inhale some of the lovely aromas (through my mask, but still), and perhaps pick up something to snack… Read More A Little BasQue Potato Dish