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24
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2016
I
n many places, food is the root of friendship. But in Ecuador the
description comes with a little extra flavor. For me, the sentiment
included a gentle knock on the door and a hot steaming soup —
with a pair of rooster feet sticking up from the middle of the bowl.
The soup and the knock turned up 20 years ago when my husband
Scott and I were living upstairs from Susanna, a widow with
four children who tended a small sugarcane farm in a southern
Ecuadorian town called Vilcabamba.
The feet? They were once part of a rooster who couldn’t wait until
dawn to crow. Instead, he liked to get going around 3am. The
problem was solved Ecuadorian-style. We bought the rooster, and
gifted it back to Susanna who served it to her family for Sunday
supper. The soup was Susanna’s peace offering. We are still friends
to this day.
Big Things in a Small Package
Ecuador is about the size of Colorado, but what it lacks for size
it more than makes up for in geographical and cultural diversity.
Straddling the middle of the world, the country offers snow-capped
volcanoes, mountain lakes, Amazon rain forests, cloud forests,
beaches along the Pacific, and the famous Galápagos Islands. And
when it comes to food, the offerings are
even more varied.
Like many tourists, we gave the famed
roasted guinea pig (called cuy) a try. It
produced a reaction similar to New Orleans
foreigners trying to eat boiled crawfish: “lots
of work for little meat.” Roasted cuy, which
sort of tastes like rabbit, is full of bones. It’s
often prepared in the mountainous regions
of Ecuador on a spit over an outdoor fire.
While it gets a lot of press, there are many
other Ecuadorean specialties to be found
including the seafood and plantain dishes
in the coastal cities and the beef, pork and
chicken recipes found in the highlands.
A common thread that runs through
all cuisine in Ecuador is fresh. Fish and
other seafood come right out of the ocean.
Meat, fruits and vegetables from the local
countryside are plentiful and easy to buy.
The Ecuadorean people sell wares from
wheelbarrows, baskets, car trunks, pickup
trucks or just on a blanket spread out on the
sidewalk. There also are beautiful outdoor
marketplaces,which include colorful flowers
and warm wool sweaters and the Panama
hat (originally from Ecuador, not Panama).
And there are so many different fruits in
Ecuador you probably could drink a different
juice each morning for a year. The phrase
“throw a seed and it grows” must have
originated from this place, where the different
climates produce a huge variety of fruits.
“We get fresh mangoes from Ecuador, as well as
papayas. Mangoes are actually the biggest selling
fruit in the world.”
—Patrick, Rouses Produce Director
the
Around the World
issue
Sopa,
So Good!
by
Suzette Norris