Ecuador food habits and local cuisine, Quito thermal baths as a bonus!

Food market in Otavalo, not surprisingly it looks just as colorful and fresh as in other South American countries. It actually looks pretty much like Asian markets I have been, too.

Most travelers always say how they look for local flavors and enjoy local cuisine (or perhaps that they did not enjoy at all, usually there is a strong opinion one way or another).

Hold on. Do most of them? Really? Now that I think about it, the travelers I meet and people who describe themselves as 'travelers' (because they went on a package all-inclusive holidays) say that but it does not give justice to what I think should fall into this category. My own perspective is quite particular and it does not include all-you-can-eat 'local inspired' food experiences. It is true that not all the people are the same adventurous and not all the people have to be into new experiences. I understand that. But then for goodness sake do not call yourself a world traveler and a globetrotter if you are afraid of getting down and dirty with local cuisine.Understanding people through how they prepare and eat their food has long been my secret way of uncovering what lies underneath.

Encebollado (no animal products, although I am sure the broth was meat-based) - a hearty soup with potatoes, onions and other stuff ;) limes and hot sauce. For snacks - plantain chips and popcorn. And the way to eat it is to mix everything together in the soup.

Yes, big part of my inspiration when traveling, comes from the way I experience local food. It is through food and food-routines that people around the globe define their culture and themselves. Let me explain that I little bit more.

Have you ever noticed that some cultures put great effort in food preparation and joined meals? Traditional feasts involve sometimes very elaborate cooking routines. Have you ever consider why that is?

I think food has always been the joining ritual. I would even risk a theory that the less 'developed' a society or a community, the more likely you will find great deal of food-involving rituals. This is why you cannot skip this part of traveling experience if you really want to understand local culture and how people live their lives. I have enormous degree of appreciation to being exposed and involved is some of local food rituals. I always seek them and sometimes I get lucky. Like the time in Myanmar when I got invited to a birthday dinner by a receptionist of my hostel. The meal was very traditional and I felt privileged getting an invite just by chance. You can find a short description here, although it is in Polish (I should probably make another post in English). Those meals are prepared in a traditional way (frankly there is almost no other way when you travel outside of the western hemisphere) and the way they are conducted is often very  customary too. Often times the sitting position around the table is also quite particular. It is good to be aware of these things, that are long lost and forgotten by the West. Like 'village meals', who of you have heard of such a thing? Maybe a hundred years ago if you look back, you will find something resembling this old custom of all the villagers gathered together to share a meal. And I do not mean a wedding or a funeral reception or another big occasion like that. Throughout Asia I see this tradition of communities having meals together every day still vivid and alive. I loved it in Myanmar, where not only the whole life of villagers evolves around rivers and water, they take time and pleasure in preparing joined meals and having them altogether on the river bank for example. I am guessing it is also the most efficient way of food-management. Cooking for all is the same as cooking just for your family. It is more fun to be sharing food and it certainly brings people together when doing so.

Even if you do not speak their language and you do not look like them they invite you over. They see you alone wandering around and they feel inclusive. They offer their best sits and they bring you food. They look at you with questions in their eyes though they know you cannot communicate with them effectively. They are hungry for what you know and what you have seen. Often times they cannot travel themselves. The farthest each of them will go in their life is the next village or the nearest town. If they are extremely lucky they may go to the capital city. It is not the expected thing however.

The food approach was my usual searching for local contacts and resources to use them as a guide. Asking local friends for advice what to try and what different foods are a 'must taste'. I started my adventure with looking for encebollado. I had no clue what type of food that was and apparently it was not sold just anywhere. Wikipedia tells me only now that 'Encebollado is a fish soup from Ecuador, regarded as a national dish. It is served with boiled cassava and pickled red onion rings. A dressing of onion is prepared with fresh tomato and spices such as pepper or coriander leaves.' What surprised me was not the delicious flavor, but the way to have it. With crushed fried plantains and popcorn mixed in. When they brought me small plates of snacks I thought it was like a little started. A friendly Ecuadorian encouraged me with his broken English to mix it altogether. He certainly did! I figured that the crushed plantains will add crunchiness to the meal but I could not picture having a popcorn with it. It would get soggy in no time and I hate soggy popcorn! The soup was tasty but heavy, as you can imagine. Cooked with many types of fish and meat it is very rich and filling. Addition of extra calories from fried plantains is an overkill for me. Thought to be truthful if you have worked all they physically you may need all the extra calories you can take (!). I have not, so I skipped.

Judging from all the street food I have been seeing and the food served in street kitchens there is almost no way to eat lean in Ecuador. I had to try my best to stay on my strict diet and it was not too difficult, but it was nowhere near to what people normally eat. Lean rice with salads - that was my diet pretty much, with an occasional fruit, fruit drinks and fried food for tasting new things.

Rice and vegetable salad (cucumber, green pepper, herbs), with a side of fried plantains.

What I loved about Ecuador was the abundance of variety of salads. For the two and a half weeks I have traveled in Ecuador there has been no single salad that had twice. It is like every restaurant and every chef had their own vision of what their salads will be and their visions never collided with anyone else. On a basic level this can be explained partially because I was dining at simple places where home cooked food was server. It like eating at home, your mother or your aunt have their own recipes that are not known or shared with anyone else. It makes the home cooked food special.

In Ecuador every restaurant was special that way. Simple food cooked in a traditional fashion, served with traditional side dishes, salad being one of the most common. Friend plantains were served mostly with everything. This is why plantains were sold in unbelievable quantities every morning on every street cornet. The whole nation seems to be taking pride in eating plantains all day every day.  

Quito, street food - desserts. I was astonished how sweet Ecuadorian sweets can be. It looks like the whole nation is indulging themselves in sugar constantly. People have cakes for breakfast (with a strong coffee), then they snack on street food all day and then there are desserts after each main meal. Definitely a candy travel destination (!).  

Local street vendors and fruit-bars were overflowing with fresh fruits.

It was really hard to be going around without getting freshly squeezed juice on every possible occasion. Especially that the fruits were ripe and delicious, not having had to travel long distances like we are used to in the West.  My favorite fruits were mandarins and tamarind, I could not resist also a pineapple and a watermelon. So full of flavor! Tamarin was my discovery in Ecuador, I have not been exposed to this flavor before. It is rather sour in taste and refreshing. The fruits are the size of a chestnut brown or reddish-brown color, with multiple medium size pits inside. It  is high in tartaric acid, sugar, B vitamins and, oddly for a fruit, calcium. I loved that sour tart flavor and I do not know how many tamarind drinks I managed to drink during hot days, very many! 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarind 

The above are typical tamarind candies. You could not go through a box of candies like you normally would, due to its strong flavor. It was enough to take few small bites of one and I felt refreshed and ready to continue exploration. Perfect snack on a hot day when you need a boost of energy but you do not want to fill your stomach with lots of food.

http://www.qhatuq.net/es/frutas/52-tomate-de-arbol.html

Another new fruit for me was so called “tomate de arbol,” or a tree tomato. I can describe it as a mix of papaya (sour taste again!) and tomato (just a tiny little bit). You eat it by cutting the fruit in half and spooning or slurping its inside. It is also very refreshing and not too sweet. 

Cuenca -  local restaurant for Ecuadorians. For $3.5 it offers a fixed dinner menu of three courses. I was lucky to have found it. I had a cream of carrots and rice with beans and vegetables followed by a dessert of mini jelly. All very pleasant and enjoyable. Nice ambience and gentle guitar music in the background. Lots of local people coming and going.  Places like this one make the whole effort of looking for them, worth it

Seafood is plentiful in Ecuador, these babies were still alive, moving their legs and making it a somehow disturbing picture to watch.

My favorite dessert, quimbolito. Straight from a street kitchen hot and yummy.

Quimbolito in a posh versio. The snack was served in almost every local Ecuadorian cafe and restaurant however instead of $0.5 it cost $3-5 depending how fancy you want to have it. My version was as simple as possible. This restaurant offered corn and chocolate quimbolito with a side serving of french vanilla ice cream. The best in class version was stuffed with dark Ecuadorian chocolate which was half melted inside of the pastry.

Another observation I made was that people love bagging their food. You will see children and adults caring little plastic bags with food at all times. The plastic bag concept for food packing was introduced to me in Asia. I watched people getting breakfast and buying their lunch 'bags' in the same time. In the West we have our lunch boxes and they have their 'lunch bags'. It is nothing unusual at first, until you consider what is being packed in the lunch bags. It is mostly liquid and loose foods. Foods that I would never consider for bagging like that ...

Empanadas are one of the most popular food.

I was astonished with variety of empanadas and fillings. It is like with dumplings or pastry, the general concept is the same but you can have hundreds of variations. The sweet dough with sweet fillings (strawberry, chocolate, pudding etc.) are dessert-like snacks. Usually mid-morning and early afternoon snacks although bakeries do sell them round the clock. Savory empanada can be a meal on its own for sure, especially the more elaborate versions with rich fillings (chicken-cheese etc). I really enjoyed tasting the local version of cheese filling. The local cheese was really the kind I like, white hard cheese resembling goats cheese or perhaps sheep cheese. What is even more interesting is that there is caster sugar sprinkled on top, even in the savory version. It is said to be removing the excess of cooking oil. Ecuadorian versions of empanadas are most commonly deep fried, no getting away from rich foods!

Snacking. Everyone likes their little treats to snack on during their day.

And everyone or anyone can sell food on the street.

Eating can be a celebration, but it can also be a quick meal. This picture was taken from a local bus, I was sneaky from behind my window and lucky enough to have captured this woman trying to eat her lunch in peace.

Street tea making, very common and popular. I tipped the vendor for making the little show for me. I should have had the drink too, but I didn't. I don't know I why I didn't really.

This was a little cute Asian restaurant in Tena town.

I was not expecting to see Asian cuisine in its fine state. Chatting with the owners, she was Thai I believe and he was Western. They decided to start this little joint and while I was there there were several tables occupied with larger crowd. The most difficult thing for them was to make the choice of courses appealing to customer base and not to go overboard with the cost of ingredients. Any Asian spices or other mostly common ingredients are ridiculously expensive in Ecuador due to import costs. There were not rice rolls for examples, no spring rolls either due to unbelievable cost of rice paper.. However they were able to get a local supply of rice noodles for example hence this magnificent Pad Thai. (vege-version). To drink there was always abundance of lime and lemon water, very tastefully sweetened and with always well balanced ration water to fruit juice. Refreshing and healthy, no ice needed!

Typical meet display, dinner time! Sausages look somewhat familiar, it is mostly pork.

Barbecued/ grilled meet seems to be the most common food theme. Skewers with meat on top of meat, plus meaty sides. Heaven for meat eaters. All spices up pretty well, some meats are smoked, some are grilled.

These boys are grilling a variety of cheap meats, intestines, chicken legs, lower quality pieces. Cooked long enough to become eatable. I tasted grilled intestine in a sausage wrap, it was well spiced but a bit chewy. Intestines need long cooking time really. My real purchase was a wonderful tortilla and grilled plantain. The meat tasting came as an offer from the mother of boys and I did not have heart to refuse. I took a bite politely and hid the rest of the offering in my bag.

Another wonderful culinary experience I had in Ecuador was in the Amazon lodge. The Cuyabeno lodge chefs were unbelievable and accommodating all the food request. The group I was with would usually have very tastefully arranged menu, different every day. All the animal products were coming from the amazon jungle, so they were eating really close to the supply source. Fish was one of the most common meat source. Also eggs and local mammals were served.
For me I was always surprised with combination of potatoes, avocados, plantains and salads. They were even baking a special vegan bread for me, a fresh little loaf every morning. Their local marmalade and jellies were to die for. Really yummy!  All the food was light in general (even if fried) and not spicy at all.  Interestingly the there was only one person in the group having a coffee each morning, I think the crew was quite disappointed as coffee is typically the most commonly requested drink with every meal in Ecuador.

Sweets - local assortment. Not my favorite. The reddish squares is a fruit jelly, which was pleasant. There is also a peanut square and a toffee square. The green square was my least favorite, and in fact I cannot describe what it really was. Italian style coffee, surprisingly good!

And what do Ecuadorians do to enjoy the life and foods? They go to thermal baths! No no no, do not picture the fancy SPA baths that you might have visited once or twice in your life. None of that! All of central Ecuador is sitting on a large volcanic engine so it should not come as a revelation that almost every hole in a ground has something flowing out of it. Whether it is oil for refineries or water for thermal baths. I prefer the later of course.
The water coming out from deep inside is so hot that it needs to be cooled before it can be used to fill baths. I was given a privilege of  joining my new Ecuadorian friend on a short trip North East of Quito to a local secret place of pleasures. The story behind this place is that there used to be a farm land, then the government came and built a motorway cutting across the mountains and the farmlands. People who kept their lands discovered a new source of income - thermal baths! However none of the real business development has happened (not yet). With all the potential that the business has to offer it is evident the lack of funds. On our way to this secret region there were at least two large development complexes stopped in construction phase. A very sad picture of these concrete foundations and in some cases even ready buildings, standing lonely and empty waiting for better times. Nonetheless there are two or three places that are operational and open. The below pictures are from one of the places. 

In order to get down to the river bed we had to descent on a very slippery and narrow path, partly constructed out of wood, partly stones, partly just mud. No handrails almost, and not the kind of route you would put an out of shape obese westerner (just to be clear it would be life risking for them to try and follow that path).
The actual baths are made of concrete, nothing fancy. Water is being cooled in the pipes that are going in and next to the river. Then the water is pumped to the baths, but a sheer gravity force. Several pools were to choose from, with different water temperature in each. There were little wooden huts to change clothes, and that was pretty much it.

I greatly appreciated the place even on a gray rainy day like it was. We were high in the mountains probably around 5000ft and heavy clouds were surrounding our mountain top. In the same time weather in Quito was sunny with blue skies  (!).
We brought our own lunch food and our own drinks (Columbian white wine!). It is magical to be in relaxing in a remote place like that, not bothered by a single stranger, able to do what we please. The river and the mountains seem so wild and pristine there. I could not get enough of that place.
However the water water was really hot! It is recommended to stay in a bath for 15 min max and the get out to cool. Indeed it was virtually impossible to sit in any longer. It took me almost 3 hours before I had enough of soaking and cooling, and snacking on fruits and nuts, and sipping the wine. There are not many places like that left and I am so happy I experienced it.

Other typical thermal bath places are more developed therefore not as pristine. It is common for Ecuadorians to take daily trips to thermal baths and have family picnics lasting all days, and I understand the reason why they do that. It is a wonderful way of spending quality time with friends and family. For my own guilty pleasure I prefer remote raw locations like the one above. You could not find it if you wanted, only the true local citizens know them. If you find it, enjoy and be appreciative. I was.