Saturday, January 12, 2008

Food

Some honduran food I've tried:

Sopa de Caracol



This is arguably the best-known Garifuna dish. It's a coconut milk-based soup with Caracol (conch) meat. I'm trying to track down a good recipe so I can make it for folks back home. All Garifuna soup is coconut milk-based, and you can get it with Conch, Shrimp, Fish, Crab or just plain. Served with tajadas (fried plantain or green banana) and rice.

Pan de Coco

Another Garifuna staple, Pan de Coco (Coconut Bread) doesn't actually taste like coconut. It's your basic dinner roll made with coconut milk instead of regular milk. There's a couple old Garifuna ladies in Trujillo who walk around carrying Pan de Coco, Pan de Yucca and Tableta de Coco in giant buckets on their heads.

Pan de Yucca



Pan de Yucca is not so much bread as semisolid pudding. Made with yucca, dulce de caña (molasses) and cinnamon, I can never resist buying one when I see one of the bread ladies in town.

Tableta de Coco

A dessert made of shredded coconut and dulce de caña. Very sweet, but very tasty.

Casabe

A traditional Garifuna flatbread made from mashed Yucca. It's hard and flavorless by itself, but very tasty when topped with garlic butter.

Calaguala

A juice that is made by an old Garifuna lady in Guadalupe. As far as I know, she's the only person in the area who sells the stuff. It's made from a fruit of the same name that grows wild in the mountains.

Guifiti

Guifiti is guaro (cane alcohol) or cheap rum infused with a secret mix of herbs. There are several bars/clubs in Cristales that sell their own homemade Guifiti, and each is a bit different.

Atol de Maiz

A sweet corn porridge made with, uh, corn, and dulce de caña and probably some other stuff too. It's served piping hot by a lady from San Martín (an outlying neighborhood in Trujillo). It would be great on a cold day, if we ever had one.

Baleada



The best known Honduran snack. Flour tortilla, refried beans, cheese and mantequilla (a semi-churned cream similar to sour cream). Especiales (specials) come with eggs and/or meat, too. There are great baleadas to be had in certain parts of Honduras, notably Santa Barbara, Tela and Comayagua (of the places I've been). Trujillo has them, but they're nearly as good.

Plato Típico

Typical plate. Beans, queso seco (honduran cheese), eggs and/or meat, corn tortillas, tajadas and mantequilla.

Machuca

Another Garifuna dish. Machuca is mashed plantain served with seafood soup. You take a bit of the mashed plantain (it's the consistency of lumpy play-doh) on your spoon and then dip it in the soup and eat it. I love the stuff.

Iguana



As in big lizards. Kids go into the mountains and catch them "by chasing them and jumping on top of them," according to my counterpart, Kenny. Then they take them home and cook them up and eat them. I had Iguana in Olanchito and am not in a hurry to have it again. But Kenny insists that the Garifuna way of preparing Iguana is far superior and that I shouldn't dismiss the dish until I've tried it.

Lichas



Lychees in English. I'd had these fruit before but they'd always been removed from the rind and pitted so I had no idea what they actually looked like. These things are sold by the bagfuls all over the North Coast. Lychee rinds litter the roads. I've never seen a lychee tree, so I'm not sure where they come from...

2 comments:

Earning Money the legit way. said...

I learned how to make Sopa De Jiaba( crab soup made something like sopa de caracol), because hubby raved about it, and at first I was like soup with coconut milk?? I love it, the kids love it, I make it once or twice a year, it is a treat. I love baleadas.. but can't make flour tortillas :(, one day when I return to Honduras, this will be the first thing I do.. eat baleadas...:)

Honduras Sprout said...

The lichas are actually not lychees. They are Rambutan. Close, but locally they are just called the lichas anyway. Oh well. My son loves them but we have to help him eat since the pit is so big. The last batch we bought they made my tongue tingle. Maybe I'm a bit allergic? They are really little tasty things though.

Glad to hear you are liking the local foods so much! We don't eat much seafood inland (too expensive).