Things I'm going to miss #3: The food

I know.  No surprise that I have a lot to say about this.  While I hope to be reincarnated as Anthony Bourdain so I can just roam planet and eat, until then I have to take a little time to rave about the food in my current corner of the world.  As a rule, Andean fare is pretty bland.  My experiences in Peru and Ecuador taught me that before I ever arrived in Colombia.  Corn and potatoes feature prominently, which can be, well, boring.  But while potatoes (especially) are everywhere here, there are about a hundred different types of them, and they are – hands down – the most delicious potatoes you’ve ever encountered.  Seriously, you get yourself some little tiny boiled and salted papas criollas, and you will tell Idaho to just not even bother. 

Colombian cuisine, however, goes way beyond potatoes.  Take for example what is maybe my favorite (and surely the most lethal) Colombian dish: bandeja paisa (paisa platter, i.e. platter from the department of Antioquia – where Medellín is).  This is truly a heart attack on a plate, and much to my delight, the cafeteria at Colegio Los Nogales does a more than respectable version of it.  It is a delicious spread of rice, beans, ground beef, fried plantain, a fried egg, and chicharrones, all garnished with an avocado.  Calling chicharrones pork rinds really doesn’t begin to do them justice because it just makes them sound like those gross things you buy in a bag at a gas station when, in fact, they are all meaty (ok, and fatty) porky goodness.  I can’t believe it took me until this year to figure out that on bandeja paisa day it is best to go through the lunch line with somebody who doesn’t do chicharrones so you can have theirs.  Gracias, David Aguirre.  Although teaching class after a double helping of pork rinds may not equal stellar history instruction.  Good thing the kids are as comatose as I am.    

The accompanying photographs show two of my other all-time favorite Colombian delicacies.  First, ceviche (above & which I hope you’ve tried somewhere) is just raw fish “cooked” in lime juice.  I don’t know what else to say about it.  I am fortunate to have a great cevichería around the corner, which I go to very often.  Yet as good as it is there, I have actually figured out how to improve on their deliciousness and get it up to the truly-very-special standards of La Cevichería in Cartagena: mint and olive oil.  And while I love that you can find ceviche everywhere, I am not so sure it belongs everywhere.  The movie theater?  I’ll stick to popcorn, thanks. 

And then there are tamales.  If you’re like my mom when she visited Bogotá a couple of years ago, prior to trying good tamales tolimenses you thought that tamales were dried out corn meal stuffed in dried out corn husks.  But just as the tamales I bought from a lady selling them out of a bucket in a market in Oaxaca were nothing like the crap you can get most places in the States, these tamales (wrapped in banana leaves) from Tolima are unlike anything you’ve ever had.  Trust me.  I’m pretty sure that the floppy semi-transparent things in them are just slabs of (chicken?) fat, but combined with the smokiness  imparted by the banana leaves, these bundles of joy are truly memorable.   Sí señor, with some Colombian hot chocolate (minus the cheese that some people melt into it – that’s one food thing I have not been able to get behind), I could probably eat my own body weight in these little gems from Tolima.  Fortunately for me and hung-over Colombians, they are ubiquitous at Saturday and Sunday morning breakfast places.  In my humble gringa opinion, some of the very best ones (pictured here) are to be found at La Puerta Falsa, a tiny place off the Plaza de Bolívar that has been open since 1816.  As part of my Semana Santa stay-cation I schlepped down there today just for the tamales.  Even if it weren’t a block from one of my favorite bookstores in Bogotá, it would have been worth the trip.