Gardening rule #5056; never go plant-hunting without checking the phase of the moon. When it comes to any activity involving plants, the correct lunar phase is vital. Cut down a length of bamboo on a full moon and just watch as it gradually dissolves into dust. True story. I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes. Therefore, when I arrive at a friend’s farm hoping to score at least a dozen banana palms, with no idea of the lunar phase, I’m a little disappointed when I ask one of the workers to help me.
“It’s luna (full moon), we can’t cut them. They’ll rot. Next week is menguante (new moon). We’ll do it then.”
Seeing the devastated look on my face at this terrible news – after waiting over six months for him to bring me banana plants from his own farm, Pichi relents.
“Look, we’ll cut two now and I’ll cut the rest next week on the new moon. But don’t blame me if they fall on their faces like drunk fishermen.”
Armed with just one common garden variety guineo and a healthy chilena, I hitch a ride back to town and go home to console myself with a steaming bowl of vegetable soup.
One of my favorite Ecuadorian customs is the ubiquitous bowl of soup for lunch. It’s usually thick and filled with vegetables; most commonly yucca and carrot, and often features fish, shrimp, chicken or some meat bones. Leaning towards vegetarianism, I tend to stick with the legume and seafood versions.
Upholding the culinary tradition of my extensive worldwide travels, I learn how to make a few Ecuadorian soups, and many other traditional dishes. For this soup, take a small red onion and, after peeling it, halve it. Then, cut it into quarters, and slice it thickly. This goes straight into the pot with a head of garlic; leave the peeled cloves whole. Roughly dice a carrot, two tomatoes and half a pound of yucca. Peel and wash the yucca, and cut all the cubes chunky. Save three or four of the yucca cubes. You’ll need them later.
Yucca is a staple food on the coast. It’s in just about everything in one form or another. Yucca bread is one of my favorite snack foods when traveling on the buses. It’s also used to make llapingachos, yucca chips, yucca cake, and to thicken soups and sauces. Just after the move to Mompiche, I recall visiting Johnny when he was working on Jade’s house in Bolivar.
We prepare the fish for the barbecue and we’re starting on the vegetables when Johnny snaps impatiently, “Don’t you know anything about peeling yucca?”
“Actually, no, I don’t, but if you teach me I’ll learn,” I reply calmly.
Until that day, I’d never seen a yucca in my life. I watch while Johnny slides the tip of the knife under the skin and eases the thick peel away from the flesh. Since then, the odd yucca that makes it to my kitchen has been expertly peeled.
Throw a handful of precooked lentils into the soup pot – just enough for a sprinkling; we’re making a vegetable soup with a few added lentils, as opposed to a lentil soup – and fill the pot with water. I use fresh rainwater for this recipe, but that’s just me bragging. Any clean water will do. Set the pot to boil and toss in a teaspoon of sea salt.
Out in the boondocks, unlike most “civilized” places on earth, I’ve learned to put plenty of salt in my food. It is an excruciating revelation and I quickly adapt. In an environment where sodium-packed processed foods are rare because my food comes directly from plants instead of the supermarket, where my diet consists of 94.5% fresh organic fruits and vegetables and 5% wild seafood, plus some free-range eggs, a bit of organic farm cheese and the very occasional family-sized block of very dark chocolate, “added salt” is not a health issue. In fact, I found the opposite applied. On days when I don’t consume sufficient salt to meet my body’s requirements I suffer agonizing leg cramps – usually in the middle of the night. My inner thigh seizes up more than once leaving me doubled over in pain and almost in tears. Punching the muscle for half an hour to loosen the knot usually works. Avoiding the problem makes more sense. At the end of each day I do a quick salt assessment. One teaspoon a day keeps me in good shape. If I’m lacking a little, I can’t think of a better excuse to nibble on some freshly popped corn or a plate of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers before bed, accompanied by a large glass of water.
The soup should be bubbling by now. When the yucca pieces are soft, blend the reserved cubes of yucca and a tablespoon of freshly ground peanut butter in a little water until they are completely liquidized. One thought that frequently creeps to mind is how everyone made this kind of soup before electricity was invented. I’ve yet to find anyone who can tell me, but imagine it involved vigorously smashing things together with a rounded river rock. I have one of those in my kitchen. It’s great for crushing herbs and garlic into paste.
Pour the yucca-peanut mixture into the soup and bring it back to a rolling boil. While it’s cooking, duck out to the garden and pick four large leaves of wild oregano. The oregano plants in the full sun part of my garden have big meaty leaves that crunch when they break off and it always feels like I’m chopping a vegetable instead of a herb. Dice it finely and toss it into the soup. Make sure the soup isn’t sticking to the bottom of the pot. If it is, turn the heat right down – we still have a way to go before it’s finished.
Some of my friends joke about the availability of food products in Mompiche, or lack thereof. One guy who lives in Quito but visits regularly never shows up without a jar of smooth peanut butter.
“You can get that here,” I tell him one day, pointing out the “65% peanuts” listed on the label. “And it’s organic and 100% peanuts.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he laughs. “You want some of this Brie?”
Touché. Brie doesn’t exist in Mompiche. It’s true. Neither does Camembert, Gouda or Stilton, or any other notable cheese. But we do have two kinds of fresh organic farm cheese; hard and salty, and smooth and creamy. The cheese I buy is, more often than not, made the same morning on either the Zambrano or the Intriago farm.
Both farms are within walking distance from my house. If I’m there at six-thirty in the morning, Julio Zambrano will pour a liter of fresh-squeezed cow juice into my bottle and once in a while lets me help him make the cheese. Sometimes I end up being a cowgirl, coaxing each calf out of the pen so it can find its mother. The calf is then tied while the cow is milked, leaving some for her baby too. The men squat in the ankle-deep mud with their milking buckets, slapping and cursing restless cows and unruly calves. The cute round milking stools of fairy tales are non-existent.
The milk is strained through a piece of gauze stretched over a large plastic tub. The quaje – an aromatic liquid made from fermented cow intestines – is poured into the milk right there in the milking pens, amongst the mud and the cow poop, with the restless animals shuffling around waiting to be let out into the paddock. Health Department officials in my country would have heart failure at the sight of it, but it’s probably one of the reasons none of the locals in Mompiche ever gets sick. I’ve never been adversely affected by this cheese.
Once the solids have separated, the curds have to be pressed. The flattened palms of both hands gently press down, gradually compressing the solids into a large sphere (see photo above). This takes time and patience, adding great significance to the term “slow food”. The whey is poured off and saved to feed the pigs, dogs, and cats, while the curd ball is broken up. This is when the rock salt is added. At this point, if I plan ahead, I can scoop out a handful of curds and mix in some fresh chopped herbs from my garden; oregano, basil, wild cilantro. Abel Zambrano is astounded when I first show him. No one in his family has ever thought of it, but they are all delighted by the result.
The cheese is placed into a square wooden mold, then covered and left to harden while the farmers sit down to breakfast; a grilled plantain, a boiled egg, and a thick slice of yesterdays’ cheese washed down with milky coffee or organic hot chocolate.
The taste and texture of the cheese often depends on who makes it and the mood they are in when they press the curds. It’s hit and miss shopping; you may or may not end up with what you want. When such versatile cheese costs just two dollars a pound, I never complain, and usually buy half a pound at a time. For this soup, the hard and salty variety is best. It’s also great sliced thickly and grilled with fresh garden herbs and for grating onto pizza; you’d never know that delicious stringy melted cheese on your margarita isn’t mozzarella (as many local pizzerias falsely claim). The smooth and creamy cheese is better in green salads and sandwiches. One of the best things about farm cheese is that it doesn’t need refrigeration. If I don’t use up all the half pound, I can leave it on the bench overnight – out of the cats’ reach – and give it a quick rinse before grating it into the breakfast omelet. Every so often, the cats still find a way to reach it and steal the cheese, little rats!
So, by now you have a quarter pound of fresh organic farm cheese – if you haven’t dropped dead from starvation waiting for the last part of the recipe. If it’s too salty, soak it in fresh water for half an hour. Cut the cheese into smallish cubes and throw it into the soup. Just a few minutes more and the soup is ready. Instead of melting, the cheese will just soften slightly until the texture is a bit like chewing gum. Some people squeeze half a lime into the bowl. This changes the flavor completely but it comes down to personal taste. However it’s served, this is a delicious hearty soup for those chilly rainy June days!
“Cold in June?” You ask, “but aren’t you in the northern hemisphere?”
Yes. By just thirty minutes. But the weather is the same as the southern hemisphere while the names of the seasons are the same as the north. Hot winters, cool summers. Confused? Despite Quito’s freezing December days, Mompiche enjoys one of the hottest winter seasons in Latin America but summer nights can sometimes get a little nippy. Regardless of the weather, soup is the mainstay of the lunch hour all year round. One exception is Encebollado – the famous Ecuadorian breakfast soup made from albacore, yucca and, of course, thinly sliced red onions, served with Chifles.