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Food & Drinks, Page 6

Guatemalan Cuisine: Fiambre

How can we go by Dí­a de todos los santos (All Saints’ Day) and Dí­a de los fieles difuntos (All Souls’ Day) …

The Jocotes de Corona Wallpaper

Here’s yet another gift for those Guatemalans living abroad, the jocotes de corona wallpaper that you can download from here at 1200×900 …

Guatemalan Cuisine: Amarillo

This Guatemalan stew takes its name from its yellow-orangy color. Amarillo is the Spanish word for yellow; those living in Texas probably …

Guatemalan Cuisine: Rabo Guisado

Okay, get your Guatemalan notebook handy, we’re about to learn a few Guatemalan words and concepts. Rabo Guisado translate roughly as ox …

Guatemalan Cuisine: Tacos

Tacos is yet another word shared by the Guatemalan and Mexican gastronomy. If you’re accustomed to Mexican dishes, you have to be …

Guatemalan Cuisine: Atolillo

I am sure many Guatemalans have not had atolillo yet! If you have had atolillo before, please come forward. Atolillo is made …

Tres Volcanes Honey Spread Project

The Departamento of Sacatepéquez (State or Province), where La Antigua Guatemala is located and to which is the Department’s Capital, is very …

Guatemalan Cuisine: Mixtas

Guatemalan mixtas (mixed) are basically hot dogs which come with tortillas instead of a bun. Simple and great tasting. There are other …

Did Anybody Say Jocotes?

There are some Guatemalan fruits that are impossible to translate into English; jocotes is one of them. Jocotes is the little round …

Guatemalan Fresh Fruit Snacks

Since you guys are having the cravings for Guatemalan fresh fruit snacks, I decided to show you the current options. All you …

Green Mango for MO

Boy, do I sacrifice for you guys, or what? MO (Mario) asked for a shot of green mangoes and here I am …

The Rellenito Transaction

Last time I showed rellenitos here, was a photograph taken at home with control conditions of light and presentation. The photo was …

Paternas or Cushines

Once again here is a picture by request. See, Edgar got jealous because Carmen obtained a couple photos of rellenitos as requested, …

Healthy Lunch: Chef Salad and The New Yorker

Every once in a while is good to stop eating Guatemalan food and eat something healthy, like a chef salad from La Fuente restaurant. A salad and the New Yorker Magazine is what I consider a healthy lunch. The article about an unknown photographer by the name of Eugene De Salignac and his photo of painters spreading out like musical notes, on the Brooklyn Bridge, over the sky line of New York, was most definitely the best dessert I have had in a long while.

Guatemalan Cuisine: Rellenitos

Rellenitos (little fillings) is the name given to a food made from plantain dough which molded into a semi-round shaped and filled (thus the name) with a black beans sauce or stuffed with manjar (custard). It is a sweet meal and normally eaten as junk food or as dessert. It is one of my favorite Guatemalan desserts and I am sure I am not the only one with a soft spot for this kind of meal. Check out this close-up shot of rellenitos to see the black bean sauce filling.

Mexican Shrimp Ceviches in La Antigua Guatemala

Okay, all my dear ceviche-loving friends (you know who you are), I have already placed the order for the shrimp ceviches and bought enough of the Guatemalan brews known as Moza and Brahva Beats. I know Manolo is bringing Stella Artois and Steam Whistle; Guy is bringing New Castle and Guinness; Jerry B is bringing a micro-brewery sampler from AleSmith; Edgar and Carmen are bringing Cubas Libres and whatever beer Edgar likes; El Canche is bringing himself out of piles photo memory chips and Guatemalan slavery-work schedules. Everyone is invited to this huge ceviche party, but you better hurry because the lady is putting the final ingredients on the Mexican shrimp ceviches available in La Antigua Guatemala. If you don’t like the Mexican ceviches, we can alway go to La Naranja Pelada or Blanqui Sevicherí­a for the sacred dish.

Guatemalan Cuisine: Rice and Beans

It was the Garí­funas, the black Guatemalans living in the Caribbean shores of Lí­vingston and Puerto Barrios, Izabal, who made an exquisite meal from rice, beans, coconut milk, tomatoes and herbs. Garí­funas called it Rice and Beans; yes, in English. This meal has several variations and names in the different Caribbean communities. For instance in Cuba, Rice and Beansdish is known as Moros y Cristianos (Moors and Christians).

Guatemalan Cuisine: Tapado

The tapado (covered) dish comes from the Guatemalan Caribbean region of Lí­vingston, in the department of Izabal. Lí­vingston’s population is made up by Black Guatemalans known as Garí­funas, Q’eqchi’ Maya and Mestizos (mixed) and it’s precisely this mixture that is necessary to create such a delicacy. If you are in La Antigua Guatemala, you can only find this dish at El Pelí­cano Dorado (I think). According to Guy, the ceviche connoisseur, you can also find a great ceviche at El Pelí­cano Dorado.

The Best Ceviche in the World

This is the Vuelve a la vida seviche (Come back to life ceviche) from the Blanqui Sevicheria in Escuintla City, a town about 40 minutes from La Antigua Guatemala. I know Manolo, Guy, Pirata Cojo, El Canche and other will have fond memories and things to say about this ceviche photo. Let their comments come…

Guatemalan Tortilla Basket

Right now, the going price for tortillas is 6 tortillas per one quetzal (Q1 = US$0.13). This fact brings me to another interesting aspect about tortilla selling in Guatemala: tortillas are sold by units and not by weight, which means some tortillas could be tiny or really thin or worse yet use maseca flour in the mix. 🙁

How to make the perfect Guatemalan Tortilla

Well, for starters you need ‘real’ nixtamalized maize dough (nothing of the maseca flour that Manolo uses), a ‘real’ comal (baked clay griddle) and you need to use ‘real’ leña (wood logs, quite possibly pine). After that, you need a good pair of hand to tortear (hit into shape) a real looking tortilla. You don’t need no sticking mold to shape your tortillas ma’am. 😉

Traditional Guatemalan Christmas Food: Dobladas

Dobladas (turned over) is our last meal at the Virgen of Guadalupe Celebrations. Dobladas are made from nixtamalized masa (maize dough) like tortillas, but other ingredients are added before the masa dish is folded over itself and cooked. The ingredients that are added to the doblada are normally ground pork rinds, cheese, mashed potatoes, whole beans, et-cetera, but could be anything really. For instance I would like to find dobladas with cheese and loroco flowers; that would be very tasteful. Dobladas are normally fried or cooked over a comal (griddle made from cooked clay); just like tortillas. Dobladas are very similar to pupusas, except they are turned over. Check out the giant pupusas or Mayan pizza photos. Once dobladas ared cooked they are top with repollo salad (cabbage salad or coleslaw), tomato sauce and/or chile sauce (hot and spicy sauce).

Traditional Guatemalan Christmas Food: Fried Plantains

But like in anything else in life, something good emerged from such a tragic history. Fried plantains, rellenitos (fried plantain mass filled with black beans), atol de platano (plantain-based hot and thick drink) and even the wrappings of traditional Guatemalan tamal came from the banana trees. Man, I could on and on talking about bananas recipes and dishes in Guatemala like Bubba did in Forest Gump about shrimp.

Traditional Guatemalan Mole

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!

The Buñuelos King of La Antigua Guatemala

This guy is the self-proclaimed King of the Buñuelos of La Antigua Guatemala. After making such claim, he turned towards the competition and asked, “Isn’t true that I am El Rey?” to which the other vendors just nodded. Last year on December 6th, 2006 there was a picture of his fair food stand.

Torrejas, Torrejas, Anyone?

Guatemalan torrejas is what happens when you mix a good sampling of Guatemalan sweet bread known as molletes; stuff it with manjar …

The Best Fiambre in the World

I don’t know why the word salad brings all kinds of vegetables to mind. Fiambre is a salad, but it mostly has meats, all kinds: sausages, hams, chicken, sea food, meats pork and beef. It is Domino’s or Pizza Hut that has a meat lover’s pizza with a mere 5 meat. Move over meat lover’s pizza; fiambre has over 25 meats.

Ceviche from La Naranja Pelada

Anyhow, much has been said about ceviches and there are almost as many spellings [seviche, cebiche, sebiche] are there recipes from all the different countries of Latin America. But three ceviches styles are the most widely known: The Mexican, The Peruvian and The Guatemalan Ceviche. All seviches have their own twist and I have to admit that the Guatemalan cebiche with conchas (shellfish with dark, almost black, ink) is the least appealing of all. Yet, for those brave enough to have tried it, the Guatemalan conchas ceviche is a total delicacy. Guy from Inner Diablog has spent enough ink talking about ceviches and since he’s a total connoisseur, I rather you go to his blog and read about ceviches there.

Antigüeño Breakfast at Rainbow Cafe

The Guatemalan Writers Side Note:
For being such a tiny banana/coffee writers republic, Guatemala does produce and export quite a few good writers. I have mentioned some of them in this site like Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Pepe Milla, Ronald Flores. But, I have not done enough to talk about the great Guatemalan Literature written by its many excellent writers. Thanks to a comment by Coltrane_Lives about the possibility of his adopted Guatemalan daughter becoming a writer, I can point out a great Guatemalan novel written in English by Francisco Goldman, a respected journalist whose work appears often in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books and Harper’s (source: literaturaguatemalteca.org [ES]). “Francisco Goldman won accolades and international recognition with his extraordinary first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens, the winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts… ” (source: amazon.com). Another great contemporary novel is Ruido de fondo (background noise) by my dear friend Javier Payeras. Javier Payeras is one of the clearest and loudest voices of this generation and his poetry and prose has won the recognition in and outside Guatemala. Ruido de fondo has been reissued by the Guatemala’s Government Editorial Cultura to be required reading for High School students in Guatemala. For those who are fluent in Spanish, I leave the link to one of my favorites poems by Payeras: Soledadbrother.

Tropical Fruits Guatemalan Breakfast

I guess you can have a breakfast like the one pictured above just about anywhere in the world since these tropical fruits are shipped everywhere now. This breakfast, however, was made from fresh fruits grown and harvested within an hour or so from La Antigua Guatemala; with luck the fruits were picked the day before.

Coffee Table in La Antigua Guatemala

We are back to coffee beans, again, in the form of table available in the patio area of Fernando’s Kaffee. I believe La Antigua Guatemala is blessed because most days you can have your breakfast in the patio and most patios are so full of gorgeous and exotic (for the rest of the world) plants and flowers. I recommend that you have breakfast and a good cup of coffee at Fernando’s Kaffee if you come to La Antigua Guatemala. For those who only want to have access to this fabulous coffee, Fernando confided in me that very soon, in the next couple of weeks, he will begin exporting his in situs roasted selection of Guatemalan coffee beans. You will be able to order any amount of coffee (starting at 3 pounds, I believe); so keep an eye at coming-soon Fernando’s Kaffee web site.

Guatemalan Kitchen Colors

These are some of the most often used ingredients in the Guatemalan kitchen. This photo was taken on Calle del Arco in front of La Fonda de la Calle Real at a booth that the restaurant put out to showcase their flavors and the ingredients they use in their kitchen. You can take this photo to your local Latin market and start cooking some of the recipes found in this site under the Food and Drinks category. Bon Appetite!

Theme Day: Typical Breakfast

Basically, the Guatemalan breakfast includes black beans, eggs, coffee and maize tortillas or bread; it may also include fried plantain, cream, creese and chirmol sauce. The black beans can be served parados or whole, revueltos or refried and licuados or liquified. The eggs can be served sunny side up like the picture above, boiled or scrambled.

Tortas Locas Hipocampo in La Antigua Guatemala

Every day that passes by makes La Antigua Guatemala a more cosmopolitan place to live. Mexican tortas is one of the latest additions to the antigüeño menu and what better transnational than Tortas Locas Hipocampo.

I had the tortas from Hipocampo in Mexico and they are made to the highest standards and the quality of their ingredients is superb. So, it was a surprise to learn they had opened a franchise here in La Antigua Guatemala. I had to go and try them out. The verdict is that the Tortas Locas Hipocampo serves pretty good tortas, not as good as the Mexicans since the bread is not exactly torta bread and they serve their tortas with french fries; this must be a Guatemalan twist. But overall the quality of the tortas is pretty good. It is on the expensive side for lunch though.

Guatemalan Fair: The Charcoal-broiled Meat Booth

The charcoal-grilled meat stall has gotten so hip that you now find it not only in fairs, but around La Antigua Guatemala in parks, markets and sidewalks. Back in February 20th, 2007, I showed you an extremely popular stall of grilled meats in Tanque de la Unión park from a bird’s eye point of view. In the picture above, chicken and beef steak were being offered along broiled potatoes. Q10 ($1.25) for a portion of the meat of your choice, chirmol (read the side note), guacamol and potatoes; definitely, not too bad of a deal.

Guatemalan Fair: The Seeds Stall

I don’t know if you have noticed this, but seeds are very popular in Guatemala. If you recall the entries Name the seeds! or Guatemalan sweets; so it is obvious that seeds had to present in a fair booth. Okay, what do we have here? Peanuts in their shell, Guatemalan pumpkin in melcocha syrup, sesame seeds with melcocha, salty fried or roasted habas (broad beans); that’s as far as I can distinguish. Read the entry on Guatemalan sweets if you want to know what is melcocha.

Guatemalan Fair: Fresh Fruit Stall

After all the pounds we have gained this week at the San Pedro Las Huertas Fair, it is nice to come across some healthy food. For Q5 ($0.65) we can take any fresh fruit bags and we will need the savings since we already lost quite a few Quetzales at the others fair stands. Now, even though I have shown all these Guatemalan fair food and even describe it as tasteful and delicious, I don’t want to pass it as healthy. Fair food is junk food. I am so glad these fair food vendors have not come across the Super Size Me concept!

Guatemalan Fair: The French Fries Stall

Papas fritas is the Guatemalan Spanish name for French fries. Here is the abbreviated history that gave us the Guatemalan french fries stall: first the Quechuas or Incas domesticated the potato (Solanum tuberosum) into a crop in southern Peru and northern Bolivia; the Spanish conquistadors took it to Europe where it was an instant hit and along with maize turned a famine-prone population into a healthy society; somewhere in one of the northern European states, quite possibly Germany, the potato lost its skin and got deep-fried; This Eurpean recipe crossed the Atlantic with the new immigrants that came to U.S. and since it was a foreign-looking recipe, they called it French fries (remember Coneheads); so the French fries came to Guatemala along one of the many incursions from the United Stateians (Americans they seem to call themselves 😉 ) as a side dish for the hamburger or the hot dog. Guatemalans thought that French fries were too good to be side dish and turned it into a meal by itself. That is how the papas fritas cart came to be.

Guatemalan Fair: The Pizza Kiosk

A recent addition to the Guatemalan Fair zoo is the pizza kiosk. Just like many other aspect of modern Guatemala idiosyncrasy, pizza has come to stay, but it must evolve, just like chinese food. So the typical Guatemalan town fair pizza is made from a less tasteful dough, only mozzarella cheese and ham; nothing more. You get your slice and normally ad ketchup to it. The Guatemalan town fair pizza stand is, almost invariable, managed by one or tow young indigenous teenagers or young adults with a taste for extremely heavy rock metal music which they blast from a portable boom box. The pizza booth may have posters describing their pepperoni or salami pizza even though they only sell ham pizza. Go figures!

Guatemalan Fair: The Churreria Stand

A town fair is not a fair without the churros. A churreria is the place where they make churros; [CHOOR-roh] Similiar to a cruller, this Spanish, Mexican and Guatemalan specialty consists of a sweet-dough spiral that is deep-fried and eaten like a doughnut. Churros are usually coated with a mixture of cinnamon and confectioners’ (or granulated) sugar (source Answers.com). Just about now after looking the Guatemalan churrerí­a, I got the cravings for a cinnamon-covered bag of churros, would you like an order too? If you don’t have a sweet tooth, you can always have plataninas, poporopos, chicharrines, and anillos frescos y calientes; your choice.

Guatemalan Fair: The Typical Booth

We continue the photographic tour of a Guatemalan town fair with a typical booth. Since the inflated toys and balloons are very obvious, we will play the game of naming everything else that you see on the table. I will get you started with the bags of peanuts on the left. Now it is your turn, name as many things as you can recognize. Let the game begin!

Guatemalan Cuisine: Revolcado de Panza

Traditional Guatemalan cuisine refuses to be phased out in favor of international fast food like hamburgers, pizza, hot dogs and chinese food. Even though foreign fast food is convenient, it lacks the complexity in flavors that Guatemalan dishes have. Even a simple dish like Revolcado de Panza, a sort of tomato-based curry with spices and cow’s underbelly brings forth an avalanche of flavors, textures and feelings to the taste buds.

Traditional Guatemalan dishes take a long time to be prepared, sometimes even weeks like the Fiambre (a cold-cuts salad), so they can not compete with fast food junk food in the time of preparation. But who says they have to be prepared the moment you show up to order it? That is fine for sandwiches, but Guatemalan traditional meals are sold by having a ready-made buffet where one can go and just order portions.

The Guatemalan Chevere Hot Dog Cart

“Chevere” is a Venezuelan Spanish word which means cool, fine, excelent, okay, just to mention a few of its meaning. Well, about the origin of the chevere word, I don’t know; perhaps it is not even Venezuelan. Nonetheless, the word is understood and used in Central America.

In Guatemala, a company of hot dogs decided to use as its name in the late seventies or early eighties. The company did things right and it was a total hit and the Chevere brand became almost as omnipresent as Coca Cola, Pepsi and the Gallo Beer. It was everywhere.

Guatemalan Sweet Bread Sampler – One Year Anniversary

What about the Guatemalan Sweet Bread?
Oh yeah, I am rambling again. In the photo above you see one of things Guatemalans abroad miss the most: Sweet Guatemalan Bread. I have talked about cutting a cake for this anniversary, but then I decided to shared the poor Guatemalans alternative: La Torta, this huge sweet bread, takes the place of the cake for many Guatemalan families. Also, as suggested by some friends, I decided to include other pieces of the Guatemalan sweet bread repertoire for all those chapines abroad. In Guatemala, we dip the bread in the coffee, as described by Manolo in LD’s entry about Miss Manners International. Since Manolo can not find champurradas (the flat tortilla-like bread in the picture) in Toronto, he dips his cookies in the coffee. I hope you don’t get grossed out by my dipping the bread in the coffee; I am doing it for the full impact on those Guatemalans who live abroad and visit this site infrequently.

The sweet Guatemalan bread in this picture comes from a very popular bakery in La Antigua Guatemala by the name of San Antonio, which stills uses brick ovens and wooden logs. The bread is baked freshly twice a day and with the best recipes from La Antigua Guatemala, the culinary capital of Guatemala. Sweet bread dipped in a cup of the best coffee in the world (from Antigua, of course), what else can you ask from life?

Name All the Tropical Fruits

One of the things I like best about La Antigua Guatemala is its location. One hour or less from Guatemala City and …

Guatemalan Cuisine Sampler

Nowhere is Guatemala’s syncretism more evident than in its food. Here you have a sampler of what is considered authentic traditional Guatemalan …

Guatemalan Cuisine: Pepian

Yesterday I talked about meeting people and having lunch at La Fuente Restaurant, which is a restaurant I visit often because of …

Fair Food

With the season’s celebrations comes the ever-present traditional fair food. Here we have a shot of Guatemalan mole and buñuelos in the …

Guatemalan Cuisine: Hilachas

Hilachas is the name of the dish based on shredded meat with recado (tomato-based sauce), and cut up potatoes. If you compare …

Guatemalan Cuisine: Fiambre Slideshow

In November 1st and 2nd Guatemala, like many other catholic countries, celebrates the Day of the Dead (Dí­a de los Difuntos) and the All Saints Day (Dí­a de los Santos). The cemeteries, from the most exclusive to the most modest and humble, become overwhelmed with people bringing flowers, crosses, food and even music (sometimes Mariachi music) to their dead relatives.

Agua Pura Salvavidas

Agua Pura Salvavidas is Guatemala’s first and largest bottled water company (Purified water Lifesaver in English). Matt Bokor describes it like this: …

Guatemalan sweets

Guatemalan traditional candies and sweets are still made with fruits and seeds (they are so behind!). At front we have sweets made …

Guatemalan candies

First of all the answer for yesterday question is candies. These are artisan candies and Antigua is one of the best places …

Pump up the color

I am sorry guys, I know it gets boring, but I have to bring another photo with rich colors. These are wrappers …

Antigua’s market vendor

Antigua’s market vendor, originally uploaded by rudygiron. Supermarket is the theme for today in 25 daily city blogs. Antigua does not have …

Fruits and jelly stand

Here is another fruit stand in Antigua’s market. Most vegetable and fruits stands are owned by Guatemala’s indigenous people. The mayority of …

Antigua’s market vegetable stand

Veggies and Lucky, originally uploaded by rudygiron. Antigua’s market days are Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Although, you can go to the market …

Guatemalan Beers

These are the widest available Guatemalan Beers. In the picture you can see the 1 liter container for Gallo, Victoria and Brahva. There are five other brands which belong to Gallo house (Cervecerí­a Centroamericana) as well as Victoria. Beer is the preferred alcoholic drink for Guatemala and quite understandable since it is a tropical country. My favorite Guatemalan beer is Moza [sp], a bock type recipe.

Shrimp Ceviche in Antigua

Ceviche is very popular food in America. There are many ways to prepare it and there are many recipes per countries. The …