The South American Table

I've decided to learn how to make some South American dishes. I'm a bad cook, but Randy and Cara have a great cookbook, The South American Table, The Flavor and Soul of Authentic Home Cooking from Patagonia to Rio de Janeiro. I figure with such descriptions I could not go wrong.

First, I made the traditional Rice and Beans.



They were pretty good. I think it was because of this serious-business garlic paste that was made first. A week later, I can still smell garlic whenever I put my hands anywhere near my face. I'll have to figure something out for that problem.



Our yard had a huge banana tree. The gardener chopped it down the other day, not sure why, but he left us with a big ol' bunch of bright green bananas.



So, I made green banana curry.

Peeling the bananas was quite a chore. They were so new that they could only be peeled like potatoes, with a knife. A sap-like substance was seeping out of the skins that stayed on my hands throughout the day until I finally soaked them with vegetable oil. I can't tell you which kind of veg, as I've yet to learn that set of vocabulary.

Then I just curried them up, pureed lots of onions, tomatoes, and of course garlic, and finally added some coconut milk.



I like the bottle. It's cute.



Then end product made me a bit sick to my stomach, but everyone else liked it. It was probably because I could still smell my hands.



Yesterday I made Kiveve. It's a Paraguayan dish with winter squash and cornmeal.



It's really yummy. I don't think it's supposed to be as good as it is. This is because it calls for cornmeal, and I bought what I thought was cornmeal, but when I opened up the package, it was obviously not. Rather than being plain, it was very sweet smelling and powdery. I think it was a kind of pudding mix. So, I really made squash dessert instead of squash dinner.



Next week will be a whole array of new things. Poor Rachel.

I want to cook Thanksgiving Dinner for our Brazilian friends. They are happy about this, and maybe will keep us around a while now. I've heard that turkey is quite difficult to find here. Yesterday at the store I came across a good frozen one--who'd guess?! Cara told me I better snatch it up because I probably wouldn't see that again. So I did. Imagine me, the procrastinator, already with a turkey for Thanksgiving!