I just want to start by saying how much I enjoy your show, ¨No Reservations¨. Though I grew up on a mainly meat-free diet, watching you risk your digestive health by popping a chunk of wild boar intestine still flecked with partially digested herbiage into your mouth inspired in me a sense of adventure (as well as a slight gag relfex), which I try to live by as I encounter the foods of Ecuador. I realize you already did a show on Ecuador right before I embarked on my stint here, but after living here for a year, I would like to offer some suggestions for your next piece, if you ever decide to return.
The locals here proudly refer to themselves as ¨carnivoras¨, a word which is fairly self explanatory. After participating in the preparation of and sampling some of their dishes, I now include myself in that category, a fact which might shock some of the folks back home. Top of my list of best Ecuadorian foods is a dish called fritatta, a lovely concoction made by frying chunks of pork in their own fat mixed with green onions, garlic, and salt.
Though the street fritatta is tasty, I highly recommend the homemade version, prepared from pork bought at the local butcher shop down the street and so fresh the trichinosis parasites are still wriggling. The smell alone of the cooking meat will draw surrounding neighbors like flies, whom you can then put to work washing dishes or peeling habbas (after offering them a dish, of course).
A less tasty but still interesting dish is ´cuero´, which means ´skin´in english. The skin of a pig is boiled and fried, then served with an assortment of side dishes. My favorite accompaniments are chochos, tostada, and tomatoes and onions with lime and salt.
Chochos are a type of white bean, and tostada is toasted and salted corn kernels (made the same way as popcorn but using feed corn instead). As always, it´s better to share these experiences with good friends (you can make them take the first bite).
Yuagra locro is favorite with the locals, and is a soup with a fairly innocent appearance. But don´t let that creamy facade fool you. Hidden beneath the surface are chunks of cow intestine, and sometimes blood is cooked right into the broth, though there are also occasions when the blood is served on the side, as a sort of gelatinous powder.
I´m sure you didn´t pass up cuy while here in Ecuador, Anthony, but just in case I´ll give that a plug as well. The practice of eating guinea pig might be a little repulsive to the folks in the states who think of these critters as cuddly pets, but, as a former guinea pig owner myself, let me say they are also quite tasty critters. Uncooked (and cooked), they do resemble rats, but don´t let that phase you.
Roasted on a stick and served with potatoes and a peanut sauce, they could turn even the most devoted vegetarian.
I could go on, but I think you have enough material here to fill up the forty minutes of your show. And if you are lacking, don´t forget the abundance of fresh fruits which are available on every street corner. A dollar will buy you five or six of the tastiest mangoes you will ever eat, or maybe four chirimoyas, a fruit similar to an avacado on the outside but ridiculously yummy on the inside, a sort of cross between a banana and an apple.
I hope this helps, Anthony. Here´s to good eating wherever you may find yourself next!
