Cabbagey Bits

I moved over into Guatemala for a few days. Upon my arrival in town with wild hair and dirt in my ears from taking the chicken bus from out of a national park in El Salvador across the border and into the country I plopped down at a comidora outside the bus station with a fierce hunger and ordered up some grilled chicken. My plate arrived with a pile of fresh tortillas, a splash of a mild chili sauce over the chicken, guacomole on the side and pile of a cabbage based relish slightly pickled with lots of cilantro. Good stuff.

I've never really associated cabbage with food from Central America. It seems so Slavic or Northern European to be eaten in the dark of winter while bundled in heavy clothes rather than part of cuisine otherwise laden with things that dangle from tropical trees. However, I've been finding it is pretty common here particularly in the local street stall places.

In El Salvador the pupusa stands typically serve up the pupusas with a tomato based sauce (smooth though, not chunky like a Noth American salsa) and then on the tables there are big jars of a slightly fermented cabbage based relish wih lots of chili, a bit like Korean kim chi.

The uniting plant...

okay, Cultantro seems to be following me. The place where I am staying in Santa Ana, El Salvador has a living room full of art, comfy couches and a beautiful garden. This morning over coffee I was talking to the owner about various plants out there. He goes over and plucks a leaf out the ground for me to sniff and lo and behold! It is the saw toothed culantro once again. Apparantly used in soups here.

Mango Madness

So, I find myself in El Salvador. These things happen you know.

It is here that I had my first mango. Granted I had had the things that arrive in North American markets that pass for mangoes. There is even a seasonal type that shows up at the Mexican market in Chicago that is smaller than the stereotypical but has a creamy rather than stringy texture and is generally pretty impressive. However, yesterday I had a mango that I fallen from a tree.

I went over a retrieved if from the grass, peeled back its skin and...oh my. Totally different creature. Warm from the sun, falling apart with ripeness and oozing juice. It dripped down my chin and arms, bits of the flesh falling to the ground until I was left dragging my teeth along the seed.

I started my day with another one, standing in my nightgown on the porch outside my room leaning over the railing so that the juice would fall on the ground rather than the floor and looking a the lake below and hazy mountains on the horizon.

Other interesting things to eat so far:
-Whole fresh fish with cilantro and lime grilled until the skin is black but the inside flesh is still soft and white.
-Tortillas here are all made by hand with maza flour so they are smaller, thicker and softer than the ones at home. They get stuffed with cheese and other goodness here and thrown on a grill and become pupasas.

Cilantro Mystery Solved!

Okay, the long leafed thing that smelled like cilantro but did not look like from the early post on Asian style broth...

Got it.

Thanks to a little sidebar article in Saveur I have ided it as Culantro. Erybgium foetidum. It is related to cilantro but native to the West Indies and goes by pak chi farang in Thai (yep that's "farang" just like the backpackers get called, it means foriegn) ngo fai in Vietnamese.

Ahh, food geekiness supreme.