Cooking in Costa Rica

Coffee

Coffee: Not that I was ever a big fan of making my own coffee but this is how we do it in Costa Rica, with a coffee sock!

Banana Bread

I purchased a masher as we were clearly going to be doing a lot of cooking with banana's.

In my empanada class I learned how to make my own home made mixer using two forks

Until I could find a measuring cup I did some creative measuring using a 750ml ice tea bottle to estimate what 1 cup would look like.

 There was a small challenge figuring out some of the ingredients...

 And then there was the greater challenge figuring out the stove. This is a very basic gas stove. You can sort of guess at the temperature inside the oven...

Empanadas

I learned how to make empanadas. It is actually very easy and minimal ingredients:

-   

          Masa Rica(flour made from corn)

-       Water

-       Salt

-       Powdered consommé

-       Cheese

-       Lard

Amaso la masa con agua, sel y consome.

Pongo el queso adentro.

Entonces frio a fuego bajo en aceite.

This was a Spanish lesson and I clearly missed a few steps but you know the drill.

I think the trick on this might be the lard?? I tried frying them in oil but I’m not sure it is quite the same. Still not bad!

Traditional meals that I have enjoyed:

Gallo pinto – who knew. This is just rice and beans served with eggs for breakfast.  I have been eating rice and beans for years, now I have a fancy name for it.

Eggs & green beans:

Today we made these egg wraps. Very yummy!! We went into the garden and picked a bunch of green beans. Cooked them by boiling them in salt water but leaving them a bit crisp. Then beat some eggs (which are way more orange here than I’ve ever seen) they also put a bit of cornstarch in the raw eggs. I’ve never seen that before.  Anyway, we put a very tiny bit of the scrambled egg into the frying pan. It cooked very fast then lay some green beans on it and folded it over like a wrap and let it cook a little bit more. I wish I had taken pictures but I’m sure you get the idea.  Sounds a bit odd but it tastes delicious.

Potato Salad:

Weirdest thing I have ever eaten. We are served lunch at the school so I don’t get to see how everything is made but at lunch one day we had what tasted like potato salad with beets in it. It was completely purple, thanks to the beets but I could taste potato and egg. Again, odd combination but surprisingly tasty. I have no idea what was used for sauce if anything?

They also use palm a lot down here as a vegetable. They put it on our pizza, it is in with our mixed vegetables, it is served as a vegetable on it’s own. Takes getting used to but is nice.

                                                       Chayote