In the Kitchen with Juanmi

It's safe to say since arriving here in Colombia, I've tried my fair share of comida colombiana. However, my interest in food isn't limited to just the eating part - I absolutely love cooking it too! After trying so many new and delicious things, I felt inspired to start cooking up some Colombian food of my own.

But could I, a newcomer to Colombian cuisine, do it any justice? What chance did any arepa or empanada of mine have against that of an abuelita, who has spent many a year perfecting her secret recipe? Fear not, because help is at hand. Todays blog post is a special one, as it features a very important guest. Les presento a Juanmi.

Since I arrived in Barranquilla, I have been living with two very wonderful people. Sara, originally from Canada, has been living in Colombia for the past 13 years. She is married to Juan Miguel (Juanmi), who is from Cartagena, and believe it or not his Spanish is even harder to understand than that of the Barranquilleros! As hungry for the end of their words as I am for Colombian food, Cartageneros eat up pretty much every last syllable of each word, making tough work for my extranjero ears. Still..it's all good practise.

Juan Miguel loves to cook. When coming in after a long day, I am almost always greeted with a new and delicious dinner, and living with them has been a great insight into Colombian cuisine. Did you know that the burnt rice at the bottom of the pan (cucayo) is actually a delicacy here? Or that if you cook up pineapple skin with pasta, it makes a delicious thick and creamy drink (chica)? These are just some of the things Juanmi has taught me, as well as the recipe I'm about to share with you today.

The kind of thing I get greeted to daily. Yum!

As mentioned in my first post from Barranquilla, Ajiaco is a soup traditional to the capital, Bogotá. Less commonly seen in Barranquilla, Ajiaco was still on my 'to try' list. And what better way to try it than homemade, with the help of the very knowledgeable Juanmi? Not difficult to make once you know what you need, this dish is a wonderful mixture of flavours. A comforting garlic, coriander and chicken broth is thickened by a mix of 3 different potatoes types. Topped with a dash of cream and the very tangy flavours of capers, the final addition of avocado adds to the creamy comfort of this dish. With those cold winter months approaching in the UK, warm yourself up by bringing some Colombian flavour into your home.This should make enough for about 6-8 people, so invite your friends round and get cooking!

Ingredients

-3 Chicken breasts, skin removed
-250ml water
-3 fresh corn on the cob, each cob cut in half
-Salt and pepper to taste
-2 chicken stock cubes
-1 onion, finely chopped.
-1 green pepper, finely chopped

-4 garlic cloves, minced
-A large handful of coriander, stalks included
-250g new baby potatoes (papas criollas here)
-2 large 'normal potatoes' (imagine jacket potatoes)
-2 large red potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/6ths
-2 tbsp dried guasca (a key ingredient for the soup, this Colombian herb might be hard to find in your local Sainsbury's. Fear not: after extensive research, it seems that a mixture of crushed bay leaves and parsley will substitute. Hurray!)
-Drizzle of double cream for each serving
-1 tsp capers for each serving
-1 Avocado, cut into quarters lengthways (one slice per serving, or more because it's just delicious).

Method

1) Firstly, get your water on the boil and add the chicken stock, salt and pepper. Then, add in your chopped vegetables, coriander and chicken breasts. Cook this all on a gentle simmer for a little more than half an hour, and when chicken breast is cooked through, remove from stock and keep aside.

2) Strain out all the onion, pepper and coriander, and bring stock back to heat. Now add your chopped potatoes, guasca (or bayleaf/parsley substitute) and corn.

3) Shred your chicken with a fork, and return to heat.

4) Your delicious soup is now ready! Serve each portion in a deep bowl, making sure each serving has a portion of corn. Top with some thick heavy cream, and a teaspoon of capers per bowl. Add in a slice of avocado, and more coriander to garnish if you desire.



This is actually meant to be served with rice as well, but I found it amazingly filling as it was! Should you feel extra hungersome, by all means serve it up on the side.

This soup is like a big warm hug in a bowl. The mixture of flavours works so well, and serves a crowd perfectly. Give it a go and let me know how it turns out, and keep on reading to stay up to date with my culinary conquests here in Colombia.  

Comiendo en Cartagena

A month has now passed since I touched down in Colombia, and one of the real beauties of living here in Barranquilla is its location. An hour or so out of the city you can find small hillside villages, the glitz and glamour of exclusive beachside resorts, world-renowned national parks and some of the best diving to be found on the continent. Last weekend saw me headed to Cartagena. Declared part of the UNESCO World Heritage in 1984, Cartagena is a gorgeous city with beautiful Spanish colonial buildings, a nugget of the Caribbean coast seemingly frozen in time.

A mere two nights was not sufficient time to fully explore the beautiful old city, and I feel sure I will return again many times to fully explore what the city has to offer. My first trip did however offer up something very special - a trip to one of the islands off the main city, the Isla de Rosario. Once we reached the island, of course the question on everybody's lips (perhaps mine the most), was - "What's for lunch?". 

To be brief, this fellow below:

Now some people might think it weird, or cruel to hold a live creature in their hands (or fingertips) just before they proceed to chow down on it. But hear me out. I think with all the convenience of supermarkets today, where you can buy cleanly wrapped, pre-packaged portions of meat and fish, it's easy to lose sight of where the produce initially comes from. So when presented with the opportunity, I took the chance to get cosy with my lunch. An hour later I found my new friend served along with the traditional sides here on la costa, coconut rice and patacones (double fried plantain chips). 

A traditional Colombian costeño lunch was followed by a trip to the less traditional, but no less loved chain restaurant of Crepes and Waffles. Absolutely huge over here, Crepes and Waffles serve...you guessed it. There is a huge variety of savoury crepes to choose from, as well as great salads and filled pittas. After such a huge lunch, I opted for the lighter salad bar option, which permits you the freedom to fill your own plate with delicious and nutritious nibbles such as vegetable quinoa, roasted aubergine, many nuts and seeds, eggs, all the vegetables you can think of. And then obviously there's room for waffles for dessert, which I ate with such enthusiasm I forgot to take a photo (apologies!). But let me reassure you - nutella, hazelnut ice cream and waffles make a damn fine combination.

What is also particularly great about this chain restaurant is their employment ethos, where they hire a solely female workforce, providing work opportunities to single mothers who would have perhaps otherwise struggled to find work. So, you can eat your waffle and feel good about it. Excellent news.

(Read more about their employment ethos here : it's in Spanish, so test your language skills...or use google translate).

Sunday was the last day of our brief trip, and allowed me to retry some of the dishes I briefly mentioned in my last post, starting with a traditional costeño breakfast of arepas con huevos. Perfect for those of us who want a bit of protein with our carb, this is a normal corn arepa, opened and fried with an egg cracked inside. And why not double the dose of that morning protein with some ground beef in there too? Although I'd already tried this coastal speciality, I hadn't had it made by this woman:

Frying her arepas in 35-degree heat on the beach, I felt like she was a woman who knew her stuff. While everyone else seemed to be able to sit in the blazing sun with their breakfast snacks, I waited to get inside to enjoy the blissful fried ball of egg and meat in peace and cool. 

Before we hit the road, we thought it only right to get some lunch on the way home. Lunch in Colombia is a large affair, often consisting of a soup, rice, beans or plantain, and meat - meaning dinner is often a lighter snack rather than another huge meal. Although not what I'm used to, it is more a nutritionally sound form of eating, giving your body time to digest your biggest meal of the day, rather than just snoozing straight after it. And I would need a lot of time to digest what El Pibe was about to provide!

A typical cheap eatery over here, nothing on the menu exceeded COP 20,000 (about £7), and although the owner himself is Argentine, El Pibe serves up nothing but good, hearty Colombian fare.What better place to try what is arguably the dish of the country, Bandeja Pisa? Known to be notoriously large, I felt this dish might defeat me somewhat, so opted for the 'Bandejita Paisa', the supposedly 'half-sized' portion.

Half size? Come off it! Kidney beans, rice, arepa, chorizo, ground beef, plantain, fried pork rind and a fried egg make up this beautiful dish. And yes, I ate it all. A full-size portion though? Give me a few more months practise and then let's see how I go.

Back in Barranquilla, I'm continuing to eat new things daily. Strange animal parts, exotic fruits I've never seen before, a variety of deep fried, delicious snacks...and I've got so much left to try. Who knows what's next?!

Bidmead in Barranquilla

I write this current post to you from Barranquilla, Colombia, otherwise know as my new home while I work over here as an English language teacher. Situated on the Caribbean coast, Barranquilla is known for its roaring carnival in February, which is Latin America´s second largest after Rio. Other than that, despite it being Colombia's fourth busiest city, Barranquilla isn´t that highly rated as a must-see attraction in the country as a whole. While it might lack the metropolitan vibe that Medellín has become renowned for, or the sheer size of Bogotá, its kinda got its own thing going on. People from the coast, aptly named costeños, are happy, smiley, friendly people, and since I arrived just over three weeks ago I've received nothing but kindness from these great Barranquilleros. And it´s not just kindness I've received, because oh boy...do these people know how to eat!

Flag of Barranquilla

Before coming to Colombia, I´d heard mixed reviews in regards to the cuisine. While some people told me it was wonderful, I´d also received a fair few lukewarm to negative reviews of the food. What could I expect? As someone who wholeheartedly embraces all new cuisines, intestines and all (quite literally), I felt ready to sample the comida of Colombia!

And you know what? I am beyond thrilled. Colombia is particularly interesting in its cuisine, as what is available depends so much on the region you find yourself in.

Bandeja Pisa

Land into Medellín, located in the Antioquia region, and you'll find Bandeja Pisa on the menu. Not a dish to be taken lightly, it consists of (prepare yourself) - beans, rice, shredded beef, pork belly, chorizo, fried egg, plantain, tomato sauce...not something to be approached with anything less than a roaring hambre. 

Caught up in Columbia's chilly capital, Bogotá, you're likely to find many places selling Ajiaco, a warming chicken soup with no less than 3 types of potato, capers and cream.

Ajiaco a la Bogatano

But what's everyone comiendo aqui en la costa? An obvious start is fish. Fresh and plentiful here by the sea, it is served fried, accompanied with arroz de coco (coconut rice) and patacones, which are fried plantain rounds. The saltyness of the fish, accompanied by the sweetness of the rice and plantain is an absolute delight - a must-try dish for anyone around this part of the country. I was lucky enough to experience it home-cooked by a woman living in Puerto Colombia, a port town just north of Barranquilla, and it is something I will be having again very soon!

Gracias a la Señora Elizabeth por este plato tan rico!

Breakfast here in Colombia is fairly different to UK standards. Again it depends massively on whereabouts in the country you are, but so far fried chicken, pork belly, rice, plantain and soup (to name just a few things) have all managed to make their way onto my breakfast plate. I was lucky enough to have been provided with buffet breakfasts during work training in Bogotá and Barranquilla when I first arrived, which gave me a great chance to sample many of Colombia´s desayuno delights.

Hayaca, fajita, arepa con huevo, empanada y bollo. 

Hallaca, the banana-leaf covered item above, is a yucca based dough which inside has chicken, onions and raisins. Just above that is a chicken fajita, and the large circular beige item is an arepa con huevo - a cornmeal based patty, filled with an egg inside. Below the arepa is the half moon shaped empanada, a treat found across south-america but different wherever you go. Think of a pasty, Latin American style, and you're half way there.The circular thing to the right of that is bollo, which can be made from yucca, cornmeal or fresh corn (mazorca).

Will I ever be able to eat just porridge again?

While this plate above might look like a filling lunch or dinner to most readers, I'll let you know this was a yet another breakfast, with the classic caldito (soup) on the side - apparently it helps a hangover better than any painkiller! Again we have empanadas and bollo, a skewer of chorizo, some ham, pan de bono (cheese rolls), and calentado, which is a fantastic mixture of rice, beans, shredded meat and plantain. All accompanied by fresh watermelon juice and cafe con leche. If you thought an full English breakfast was good, think again, because the Colombians here seem to have done one better!

Moving onto dinner, there are some great restaurants here in Barranquilla. Given that it is a port town, Barranquilla has received a wide array of immigrants into the city over the past 200 years, which has resulted in many foreign foods merging with the traditional Colombian fare. A particularly middle-eastern influx into the city can be noted in the large amount of Arabic parillas (grills) that you can find dotted around. For a girl who lived in the bountiful land of beef that is Argentina, this is obviously music to my ears.

Parillada Completa at Zahle´s

Eating at Zahle, a highly recommended and well priced middle-eastern restaurant in the north of the city, I shared a parrillada completa. It came with various cuts of beef, chicken and chorizo, accompanied by yucca fries and a baked potato and suero (sour cream). Behind is a mixed mezze, with stuffed aubergines and cabbage leaves, chicken rice and a tabbouleh salad. 

This is but a mere peek into my first tastes of Colombian food, and every day I am trying new food, asking almost everyone I encounter what there is still to try, what they recommend, and if I can come and cook with their grandmas (really. I've had two invites so far!). So please stay tuned, and join me as I journey around this beautiful country, filled with wonderful people, and absolutely delicious food. 

Hasta la Proxima!