{"id":932,"date":"2021-02-27T20:29:45","date_gmt":"2021-02-28T04:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=932"},"modified":"2021-02-28T21:03:35","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T05:03:35","slug":"international-meals-ecuador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=932","title":{"rendered":"International Meals – Ecuador"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, we visit the equatorial country of – wait for it – Ecuador. Ecuador gained its independence from Spain in the general wave of independence movements in Latin America in the early 1800s.\u00a0 If you’re interested in learning about the period in detail, Mike Duncan’s “Revolutions” podcast did an entire series on it<\/a>.\u00a0 Highly recommended.<\/p>\n

Ecuador has a number of distinct regions, from the Andes mountains to the coast, and out to the Galapagos islands.\u00a0 We will NOT be preparing Guinea pig from the former, or endangered tortoise from the latter.\u00a0 So how about a nice fish stew?<\/p>\n

Specifically, we decided to make\u00a0Encebollado –\u00a0<\/em>a fish stew topped with pickled onions.\u00a0 In fact, the name literally means “in onions.” In addition to onions, the stew is frequently made with our old friend, cassava, or yuca root.\u00a0 Ah, cassava – source of the flour for so MANY bland starch pastes we haven’t succeeded in imparting much flavor to.\u00a0 Perhaps it will be better whole?<\/p>\n

Well, that means we have to FIND one.\u00a0 And, failing to learn my lesson from our hunt for chayote, I again drove all over Vancouver looking for it, only to discover that the ONLY store that had it was the Sav On Foods two blocks from our house.\u00a0 \u00a0Well, whatever, at least I found one.\u00a0 I forgot to take a picture of it whole, but here it is mid-peel:<\/p>\n

\"Yuca<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s actually not a tough dish to make, once you have the stuffs.\u00a0 First, you make another sofrito by sweating onions and tomatoes in olive oil.\u00a0 No garlic in this one.<\/p>\n

\"Ecuadoran<\/a>
\nOnce the onions are nice and soft, you toss in some water, cilantro, and spices, and simmer it for a bit to make a broth.\u00a0 And into that broth goes a lovely hunk of tuna to poach.
\n\"Poaching<\/a><\/p>\n

You can tell this is an action shot, because it’s got a hand.<\/p>\n

Once the tuna is cooked, you pull it back out of the liquid and cook your veggies, which in our case were the aforementioned cassava and some corn on the cob.<\/p>\n

\"Veggies<\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, we need those “pickled” onions for the topping.\u00a0 Whether or not you actually consider these pickled depends on your definition of the term – they’re soaked in lemon juice, olive oil, and salt for a bit to soak up the flavor.<\/p>\n

\"Lemons\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

As a side dish, we decided to double down on the cassava, and make small cheese breads with cassava flour.\u00a0 Because every OTHER thing we’ve made with cassava flour has been so great, right?<\/p>\n

Then again, this recipe suspiciously resembles the pao de queijo<\/em> from our Brazil<\/a> episode, and those were absolutely delicious. So lets see what happens.<\/p>\n

Flour, butter, eggs, baking soda, mozzarella cheese, blend.<\/p>\n

\"Cheese<\/a><\/p>\n

The dough turned out VERY dry when we followed the proportions in the recipe.\u00a0 Like, “not so much dough as sand” dry.\u00a0 So we kept adding water until it finally came together. Once together, the dough was rolled into small balls for cooking.<\/p>\n

\"Uncooked<\/a><\/p>\n

The indicated cooking method was actually not one I’d used before.\u00a0 You preheat the oven to “Volcano Heat” (500 F), but once it’s there, you stick the buns in and turn on the BROILER.\u00a0 So they’re in a rippingly hot oven, but only being cooked directly from one side.<\/p>\n

The results certainly looked tasty, with a nice brown on top.<\/p>\n

\"Cooked<\/a><\/p>\n

And with that, it was time to put the tuna in the stew, top it with the pickled onions, and dig in!<\/p>\n

\"Ecuadoran<\/a><\/p>\n

And it turns out the stew was another winner!\u00a0 The tuna was cooked perfectly, the broth was delicious<\/em>, with just the right amount of spice, and the acidity from the topping complemented everything beautifully.\u00a0 And the cassava root rose all the way up to the level of “tolerable.”\u00a0 It soaked up all the other flavors, and was a perfectly adequate means of conveying pickled onions to your mouth.\u00a0 The cheese breads weren’t quite as amazing as their Brazilian cousins, but they were still quite tasty.\u00a0 I mean – cheese bread.\u00a0 What’s not to like?<\/p>\n

Ecuador – we salute you.\u00a0 Your soup is tasty, and you have managed to make cassava have a flavor.\u00a0 Next time – Egypt!<\/p>\n

Recipes:
\nEncebollado (Ecuadoran Fish Stew)<\/a>
\nPan de yuca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, we visit the equatorial country of – wait for it – Ecuador. Ecuador gained its independence from Spain in the general wave of independence movements in Latin America in the early 1800s.\u00a0 If you’re interested in learning about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-meals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":942,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions\/942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}