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One Day Café

~ good eats from a small kitchen

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Tag Archives: beaches

Guest Post: Brendan O’Brien’s Take on Ecuador & Epic Fish Tacos

06 Monday May 2013

Posted by Anonymous in ecuador, travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

beaches, coco helado, dorado, ecuador, fish, fish tacos, fishing village, food, fresh fish, guest post, mahi mahi, seafood, travel

Cross-continental moves deserve their own special place in hell. While I’m busy apartment hunting, job hunting, and generally tearing my hair out, Brendan O’Brien has stepped in to pick up the slack and regale you with tales of our  adventures in Ecuador and the delicious fish tacos he and Colleen whipped up during a power outage. Skills. Thanks Obi! 

You’re probably asking yourself, “Who’s this guy?” Don’t worry about it. My wife and I are the “couple of friends” Katrina and Gaspar were waiting for in Lima because they were too scared to sacrifice a guinea pig on their own. That little sucker had the most delicious skin.

After departing Los Órganos in Peru, we found ourselves stuck crossing the border into Ecuador for between 4 and 5 hours in sweltering heat. Upon being released to frolic in their country, we immediately purchased beer, deli meats, cheeses, bread and mustard and proceeded to have a picnic in the parking lot of a supermarket. Feeling ultra-classy and well fed, we continued northwest for another 10 hours until we landed in a town called Manta, at a hostel in the part of town where clean rooms are few and prostitutes are many.

Weary bones rested, the next morning we drove the few miles left to our next bungalow in Crucita, a small fishing village with gorgeous beaches, glassy waves and fish tacos.

Crucita, unlike many of the other towns we visited, is not centered around a main plaza. No, no. This is a fishing village and the strand along the beach is the only place to be. As you head along the strand, one side of the road is occupied by restaurants with seafood so delicious it felt criminal to pay Ecuadorian prices, and on the other side is a straight 10 foot drop to the beach with neither guard rail nor inch to spare. All along that beach are wooden pavilions with thatch roofs, filled with long sturdy wooden tables (so sturdy that the tide actually comes up and washes over them every day, so at least I knew they were clean). As the boats are dragged up onto the beach, the day’s catch is unloaded directly into these pavilions where they are butchered, bagged and sold within minutes. This gringo decided that fish tacos were in order. Sadly they were sold out for the day and we were informed that 8am is the absolute latest you should arrive if you expect there to be any fish left.

The following morning, Gaspar and I rose early and arrived back at the fish market promptly at 8:15. Out of the dozens of tables where fish were to be butchered, there was only one left with any fish. A fellow was hacking heads and fins into pieces I assumed would be used for bait and to his left was a pile of filets stacked two feet high. It looked at first to be Red Snapper, a favorite of my wife’s, but when we asked what kind it was we were told “dorado,” a name we had never heard before. I expected more from my dark-skinned translator. For shame, Gaspar. We purchased four pounds of this fresh meat for a grand total of $15 and took a final glance at the heads to see if we could identify it later on Google. The Google machine quickly returned results of Mahi-Mahi. Bless you, Ecuador, bless you.

This is likely the part where I am supposed to go into details about ingredients and such, but I have never been a fan of cookbooks and measuring cups and have always preferred grabbing whatever is at arm’s-length and eyeballing a measurement. So let’s allow some pictures do their 1,000 words things.

The preparations.

The preparations. The beans bubbling away in the top right photo included chunks of fresh coconut – the very coconut whose cold agua is being enjoyed in a photo below. Waste not, want not.

Photo of the spread, taken in the pitch black bungalow during a power outage. You don't need to see, to eat.

Photo of the spread, taken in the pitch black bungalow during a power outage. You don’t need to see to eat.

Fish Tacos

The delicious final product.

Other highlights of Crucita included my first time drinking Coconut Water straight from the Coconut.

Coco Helado

And this…

Crucita Ecuador Pool View

 

Filling Up on Seafood in Florianópolis, Brazil

01 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by Anonymous in brazil, travel

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

beaches, beans, Brazil, feijão, fish, Florianópolis, pirão, seafood, shrimp, traditional Brazilian food, travel

Last week, we arrived in Florianópolis — Floripa, as it’s referred to locally. Located in the state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil, Floripa includes one main island with a group of smaller islands, a continental portion, and a whopping 42 beaches. Helloooo paradise.

Florianópolis, Brazil

In between work calls and emails (a.k.a. reality) we spent seven glorious days exploring the picturesque coastline and sampling the local cuisine. Some of the beaches, like Lagoinha do Leste, are completely isolated and tucked away and suit our tastes perfectly. Others, particularly in the northern part of the island, are teeming with locals and tourists and plenty of eateries to ensure there’s no reason to leave the beach. We like that, too.

I was excited to finally try Brazilian feijão, a black bean stew and common side dish usually eaten over rice. It’s the basis of what many recognize as the country’s national dish, feijoada, which also includes salted pork and beef. And every meal (seriously….EVERY meal) was served with pirão, a traditional gruel made with fish stock and manioc flour. It was not a hit. The texture was odd for me, something like a congealed, tepid stew, and flavor-wise it was pretty bland. An acquired taste, perhaps?

Feijão (thumbs up!) and pirão (thumbs down)

feijão at the top (thumbs up) and pirão below (thumbs down)

But seafood is definitely the foodie focus in Floripa, with pages of every menu dedicated to various preparations of fish, oysters and shrimp. Lagoons all over the island are dotted with colorful fishing boats, and full of people tossing their fishing nets in the water.

Aside from a ton of fruit (side note: I swear the bananas are sweeter) we averaged a meal a day, which may not sound like much until you lay eyes on the meals. We tried a few different versions of almoço platters, which included fried fish, feijão, pirão, fries, and a “salad” that was always some combination of beets, carrots and tomatoes. I really liked the anchova grelhada version. I had feared it was going to be a bunch of tiny salty anchovies of the packed-in-oil variety, but it was actually a gigantic, mild white fillet.

Anchova Grelhada

By far our most ambitious meal was the sequência de camarão, or “sequence of shrimp”. The name strikes me as both accurate and misleading at the same time. It is, indeed, a sequence; every time we thought the final dish had arrived, another one showed up. But it’s so much more than shrimp. There was crab, calamari, buñuelos de algas (fried balls of seaweed), a ton of different fish preparations, and of course, more  feijão, pirão, fries and salad. We were actually slightly horrified because it was so clearly more than two people could possible ingest, but we put a good hurtin’ on it.  The highlight for me was the peixe mole: chunks of fried fish topped with tiny shrimp in a savory red mole sauce.

Sequencia de Camarão

Thus far, our mission to detox from the Argentine diet of meat, empanadas and pizza has been a success! Albeit short-lived, as we’re crossing back into northern Argentina this week. It was fun while it lasted, Floripa.

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