cubanicaragua: Chapter FOOD! Foods of Nicaragua

Not to interrupt the wonderful narrative flow of my blog or anything, but by popular demand, a word about Nicaraguan food:

I didn’t have very high expectations for the food here – but I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised. It probably helps having been fed by a real live Nicaraguan family, but really the food here consists of all the delicious things that I don’t get to eat at home. Including but not limited to fried cheese, fried plantains, fried beans and rice, fried various kinds of meat, deep fried potatoes mixed with cheese, deep fried tortillas, deep fried pork rinds with yucca…and other various deep fried things that I can’t think of at the moment. In a addition there is quite a lot of banana, pineapple, papaya, watermelon, cantaloupe, green mangoes, some small sour green things called hocotes, oranges, mandarins, large avocados and lots and lots and lots of cabbage along with some other root type vegetables and strange herbs. All in all it makes for some appetizing meals as long as you can balance your daily intake of deep fried things to fresh fruit.

And if you tire of these staples there is also a lot of ice-cream, sweet breads and pastries, some little baked crispy corn/cheese doughnuts called rosquilla that are very tasty, some delicious parcels of sweet mashed up congealed corn wrapped in corn husks for which the name escapes me at this moment and lots of very good coffee (both the real kind and the freeze dried powdered kind).

My favorite thing has been the thick fresh corn tortillas that got delivered to the house in Granada every afternoon. My second favorite thing is the fresh squeezed juices, my third favorite thing is the green mangoes with salt (though I wish it was proper mango season right now The best eating out/street food I had was called a paupusa which is essentially just a corn tortilla with cheese or beans or meat stuffed inside.

The family that I am staying with at the moment was quite surprised to learn that I am rather fond of gallo pinto (beans and rice – literally translated to mean “turkey beans” because the reddish color of the beans resembles the color of a turkey) and that my favorite food in Nicaragua happens to be tortillas, which the family next door happens to do a very good job of making. So corn flakes in hot milk were quickly replaced with gallo pinto, tortilla and some fried cheese, which makes a delicious but somewhat of a heavy breakfast so I’ve been hinting at a preference for some breakfast fruit this week. And a quick word of advice to travelers staying with families or even eating in a restaurant – if you try to stick to your comfort foods you are likely to get served up margarine on pretoasted wonder bread, cornflakes in a giant bowl of hot milk, or other well intentioned forms of gringo food that you wouldn’t touch with a ten food pole at home – it is usually better to go for the local stuff that is probably fresher, and more nutritious than the alternative.

Pictures of Food

Home Cooked Meals:

(basic chicken, rice, tomato soup)

Tortilla, fried meat, fried cheese, gallo pinto, and chicharone (deep fried pork rind with yucca = yuck!) - but the other stuff was great.

chicken soup with various root vegetables including yucca, sweet potato, yams and potatos - served with cornmeal/shredded chicken/peppermint dumplings - to die for!

pork topped with shredded cabbage, tomato, and lime - over a bed of boiled yucca. The bright pink drink in the background is made of corn and some kind of pink fermented paste - its sweet and very yummy

tortilla, gallo pinto, taco, topped with lime doused shredded carrots and cabbage.

Fresh tortillas - I got a quick lesson on how to make them - but its not quite the same without your own clay oven.

Street Food:

Tamale - cornmeal with pork spices and tomato sauce inside wrapped in a banana leaf - apparently this is a special dish they eat on Sundays in Granada.

(the ingredients for making paupusas - stuffed and then grilled corn tortillas - stuffings include meat, cheese or beans...very yummy

the paupusa chef in Granada on the main market street

Papas: deep fried mashed potatoes stuffed with cheese surrounded by shredded limey cabbage and a banana leaf.

The papa chef in her roadside kitchen

bus food is a whole variety of street food unto itself - people come through the bus stations and hop on and off buses with offerings of fresh fruit, soft drinks, various kinds of biscuits and buns and tortillas and things made of corn, bagged juices and of course candy.

Juice in a bag was everywhere in Nicaragua and not a bad way to serve out the vast variety of sweet fresh juices that were available due to the abundance of fruit - however it does make for a lot of garbage in the street - this one is called tamarinda made of the pulverized pulp of these little brown furry bean things that grow in a giant tree - apparently you are not supposed to drink it if you feel annoyed - I'm not sure why though.

Eating Out on Little Corn:

Fish Taco's

Best lobster meal ever - in a butter garlic chili sauce mmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

very tastey pork wrap with fries on Little Corn

Lobster on the half shell on Little Corn

Coconut french toast with fruit salad - on little corn island they made this bread that was almost like normal bread but with just a little hint of coconuttyness

The Fresh Sheet:

limey orangy fruit

mango, starfruit and hocotes drenched in lime juice

fruits at the market

garlic and preserves at the market

cashew fruit

Bananas cooking up in a solar oven just outside of Somoto

just kidding

some kind of citrus

baby avacados

raised bed veggie gardens

baby mangoes

Rosqillas

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rosquillas the national snack of Nicaragua - they are little doughnut shaped biscuits made out of corn and cheese and some times with a little blob of caramelized sugar in the middle - incredibly tasty