How about finishing the work week with something sweet, such as this banana bread with mole and almonds. As many of you already know, Guatemalan mole, spicy chocolate sauce, is used for dessert instead of meals. Banana bread is, of course, quite popular in Guatemala, so the combination is a perfect Guatemalan dessert. You can … Read more
The mole from Guatemala is very similar to mole poblano, which is a chocolate and chili based sauce (over simplification of the ingredients). One huge difference is that mole poblano is a main dish with turkey or chicken; meanwhile Guatemalan mole is a dessert with fried plantains slices ladled with chocolate sauce or mole for … Read more
Guatemalan mole is very similar to mole poblano, which is a chocolate and chili based sauce (over simplification of the ingredients). One big difference is that mole poblano is a meal with chicken or turkey, while Guatemalan mole is a dessert of plantains ladled with chocolate sauce or mole for short. Bon appetite!
As part of the celebrations of La Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala, or The Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Saint James of the Knights of Guatemala today we had a half marathon and food festival in La Antigua Guatemala. July 25 is La Antigua Guatemala … Read more
Jocón is Guatemala’s most famous green stew. We could also call it green mole if we use the wide definition of the Nahual word mole, which is either a kind of curry or stew sauce. I know I have been scolded before for pairing the word curry with all the pre-Columbian Maya sauces and stews, … Read more
Garnachas quetzaltecas are quite the food attraction at the town fair of Ciudad Vieja. Interesting enough, hardly ever you find at the fairs in and around Antigua Guatemala. On the other hand, I could not find buñuelos, molletes or torrejas in the entire fair campground. I didn’t see mole either. Garnachas are a typical street … Read more
In Guatemala we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, well, most Guatemalans don’t, some do and most ex-pats from the U.S. do as well. Anyhow, no turkey for me today, I had mole poblano for lunch though. On the other hand, what we should be thankful for in Guatemala is to be able get fresh tropical fruits year … Read more
Here’s a simple visual recipe for the Guatemala guacamol or avocado sauce. That’s right in Guatemala we drop the final e of guacamole. My variation on the Guatemalan recipe is the red onion instead of white onion and using sea sal instead of regular salt. If you are wondering about the herb, that’s dried oregano … Read more
This Guatemalan shuco hot dog is a mixto [mixed], meaning it has more than one meat, four meats to be precise here: chorizo [red sausage], longaniza [white sausage], salchicha [franks] and salami. Even Wikipedia has an updated description for the Guatemalan shuco hot dog. Wow, it’s been a while since I last shared a picture … Read more
Learning to cook the different dishes in the Guatemalan gastronomy can be a challenging exercise, especially so in you don’t have a Guatemalan mom, grandma or aunt. What about if you are only visiting for a short period of time and would like to prepare Guatemalan pepián or rellenitos? Well, for these reasons there are … Read more
Jocón is basically a Guatemalan tomatillo-cilantro sauce; although we use the word miltomate instead. We also have another word for cilantro in Guatemala, do you know what it is? Because pepián steals all the attention, jocón does not receive as much press as it should. Basically, pepián is the brown Mayan curry, recado we call … Read more
The typical Guatemalan sandwich is simply known as Pan (bread) or pan con carne (beef sandwich), pan con chile relleno (chile relleno sandwich), pan con longaniza (white sausage sandwich), pan con chorizo (red sausage sandwich), et cetera. The bread used for the Guatemalan sandwich is usually pirujo, sort of white bread baguette, but pan francés … Read more
To the uneducated eye the Guatemalan Chevere and Shuco hotdogs are just exotic hotdogs, but to the Guatemalans these two hotdogs are very different. For starters, the Chevere hotdog is based on the Chevere brand style of preparation which is as follows: steamed bread bun, add one or two steamed hotdog links (salchicha we call … Read more
Oh December, or the dry season for the matter, is full of Guatemalan comforting foods; mostly sweets like buñuelos, torrejas, mole, camote, chilacayote and higos. Perhaps, the fact that the dry season brings forth the low temperatures, around 6C/43F, courtesy of the cold winds blowing from the great white north (home to Manolo, the provocateur … Read more
Did you know that Guatemala is the birthplace for chocolate? If not, read on. Cocoa bean (also cacao bean,[1] often simply cocoa and cacao; Mayan: kakaw; Nahuatl: cacaua) is the dried and fully fermented fatty seed of Theobroma cacao, from which cocoa solids and cocoa butter are extracted. They are the basis of chocolate, as … Read more