Day 33. Today was the highlight of our tour so far, a Nicaraguan culinary experience at a famliy home out of town. Our mission (which we chose to accept) was to decipher a recipe encrypted in colloquial Nicaraguan Spanish then scour the main market for them. Amongst the most interesting ingredients were:
- A red powder – very smelly
- A chiltome – as the name suggests, a bizarre cross between a chilli and a tomato
- A deformed carrot – a carrot, but a bit deformed
- Yuca – sounds and looks like the stem of a yucca plant and probably is
- Sour oranges – just like oranges, but sour
- Three live iguanas – main ingredient of the national dish
Safe chooses the most amusing carrot
Whilst in the market, we were treated to a cheese tasting whose delights included young, old, salty, smoked, fried and combinations thereof. (The bread roll-shaped and coloured objects in the photo are actually hunks of smoked cheese!)
Cheese!
We caught a public mini-truck and headed West out of town wedged into the back of it. The journey was reminiscent of a tube journey, excpet on the tube there’s at least a centimetre between your face and the next person’s armpit. Our destination was a family home in the suburbs of Leon inhabited by the local indigenous population which by day is a cookery school, and by night, the local cock-fighting centre.
Public transport in Leon
We were introduced to our host and chef, Doña Ana, and her daughter, Emily who explained that we were to cook two dishes, iguana soup and indio viejo (old-Indian Soup made of Maize).
Emily, Annie and Doña Ana
Our first job was to kill, skin and prepare our iguanas (we’ll spare you the details here but ask us if you’re interested). Our next culinary task was to chop the mystery ingredients for our magic potion. Everything was prepared to Doña Ana’s specifications, plantain cubed, carrots quarted, yuca pealed. The most useful tool in the kitchen was a perfectly smooth hand-sized rock which we used for crushing garlic, tenderising meat, smashing ice and juicing oranges.
Safe crushes garlic with a multi-purpose kitchen gadget
While the two dishes were simmering on the brand new Aga (a 44-gallon drum filled with timber) we ventured over to the neighbours’ house – who happenned to be the local tortilla experts – to collect some tortillas. Jodie was distracted by the giant pot of simmering frijoles while Annie was busy positioning herself for a job with the 3 ladies who work from 4am to 4pm to produce 4000 tortillas a day (almost the same hours as with the NHS). That’s more than 100 tortillas per lady, per hour, without breaks! After we all took 10 minutes each to make some very torn, rather square looking tortilla, we took some of their far better products and returned to our simmering feast.
Annie shows them how it's done
Before we could eat we had to take lots of photos of the chickens with their broods of chicks, and the rather handsome, but absolutely gargantuan cockerel Miguel.
We didn't eat these
Miguel the Magnificent
The final product of our morning’s labour were easily some of the best food we have eaten since arriving in Central America (if we do say so ourselves).
- Indio Viejo (Old Indian)
- Iguana Soup
After bidding farwell to Doña Ana we endevoured to make our way (with some rather vague instructions) to the black sand beach of the Pacific. Although our 15 minute journey took us an hour and a half we finally managed to find paradise – sand, sun, and waves. We washed away the stress, sweat, and dirt of the past 2 days in the crashing waters of the Pacific, then watched the spectacular sunset from a swinging hammock with a cold Nicaraguan Toña beer in hand.
- Safe Hammock
Perfect Day
Today’s entry was courtesy of Jodie as Annie and Safe couldn’t move their arms because they were squished on the bus.
The soup looks a little like souse. What was it like? No picctures of the beasies?
Actually it’s *much* nicer than souse! Iguana tastes like chicken but more gamey. Rather nice! We opted not to put up pictures of the scary beasties out of respect for them and for our faint-hearted followers, but rest assured, an email of the gory details is coming your way.
Very interesting seeing the famous “Safe’s Anaesthetic Effect” on animals ( and occasionally on some humans ) extending across the ocean to this ” Perro Raro ” in Nicaragua..!
It appears like Annie is hooked on a particular head gear. I could swear she has the exact hat left in her room in Spain..?
You both look very well. I do not think it is due to the strange culinary mix seen as part of the beautiful photography..! most probably it is the “Bronze Extra” due to “EL Sol Del Sur” !! Make the most of it, it is still freezing cold here.
Zaki