Guatemalan Food: Iguana en Iguashte
Not too long ago I shared a picture of iguashte or iwaxte, a vegetable salad made with ground pumpkin or squash seeds. As I said about a month ago, this is quite possibly a pre-Columbian Mayan dish. This version of iguashte with iguana as the meat was prepared in a recent cooking class at El Frijol Feliz under special request. Of course, many people would put off by having iguana as the meat, but would have no issues if it was beef, chicken, pork or turkey; the typical meats of the Western/European societies. On the other hand, the Mesoamerican societies had and have different animals on their diets or wild American versions of pork and turkey. In fact, I am almost certain that most animals consumed by Pre-Columbian people living in the American continent were wild game. These meats, needless to say, might be considered taboo or not edible to most Westerners at present day for various reasons.
So what does iguana en iwaxte tastes like? Well, Elí Orozco shares these words with us: “This dish is incredibly tasty, and for those who have never tried it, it does taste a lot like chicken, much softer and juicier. As I’ve said before, if it wasn’t for the scales, an untrained palate could not tell them apart. The Iwaxte is very rich, flavorful and smells is incredibly good. The seeds used to make the sauce are slowly roasted and the smell fills the entire kitchen.”
Elí Orozco, the editor of Guatemala Daily Photo, got into hot waters with some of his friends and peers on Facebook for sharing a picture of the charbroiled iguana before it was chopped into pieces for the preparation of the iguana en iguashte sauce. Here’s what he wrote about it:
Food in Guatemala, as in many globalized countries, has become overly Westernized. In our urban centers, any food that does not come out of the processing facility is seen as controversial, as taboo.
I recently started a controversy by showing an image of a charbroiled iguana. It was being prepared into a delicious Guatemalan dish called Iguana en Iwaxte…. continue reading at GuatemalaDailyPhoto.com
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