Craving Culinary Creations: For the Love of Food: A few helpings of Costa Rica, and a dash of Panama

I just returned from a wonderful and wonderfully delicious 3 week journey through Costa Rica, followed by a quick hop and a skip through Panama City. I thought I would take to my blog and show off a few of the tasty dishes that slid down my gullet and are currently causing me a substantial amount of foodstalgia. Ah Central America...you win this one.

Vegetarian casado

The traditional plate of Costa Rica is called Casado, which actually translates to "married," referring to the pretty much inseparable staple ingredients of black beans and rice. It can be served with a wide range of proteins, but the beans and rice stick together. Awwwww. On this trip, we were lucky enough to partake in several vegetarian casados, perhaps a reflection of changing health standards on a global scale or just a push to meet the influx of tourists and their standards (?). Maybe they've been there the whole time and I was just too meat-hungry to notice...Either way, we were pretty happy about the options, and very satisfied with what we were served. In addition to beans and rice, veggie casado comes with starch (usually ripe or green plantains) and a touch of salad: often the cheapest thing on a menu, and well worth it.

Costa Rican fruits

Menus are also littered with fresh fruits, in raw and juice forms. Many of the names escape me, but there is no denying the gigantic avocados, ripe lychees, mangoes, jugos de piña y tamarindo, and my favorite of them all = maracuya. Maracuya is golden passion-fruit, and while I have never seen it in such abundance as in Ecuador, you can still find the fruit in select locations in Costa Rica and Panama. Everything about it is amazing...from the naturally occurring bowl it arrives in, to the fact that you can eat the seeds as the pulp pulls right out, to the tangy, unmatchable flavor. Yes, it's the big golden fruit with the black seeds. Some prefer it topped with sugar, I go with salt, and either way, you are guaranteed a good-morning refresher like only the tropics can serve. Oh maracuya, let's face it...I basically keep traveling down south just for another taste of your vibrant citrus. And don't talk to me about this passion fruit pulp BS, because that shit is saturated with sugar and doesn't taste anything like the original = boo!!! NOTE: for a Tesla secret, fresh maracuya juice and rum is probably the most fantastic cocktail combination in existence....so if you ever find yourself in a land rich enough with passion fruit, please start juicing.

Fried chicken, patacones and tortillas in Panama

All this talk of veggie casados and fruity frutas doesn't mean I forsook the meat entirely. For me, no trip to Latin America is complete without the satisfying crunch of pollo frito. My aversion to meat is primarily based on the dubious platform of the way it's raised, treated and butchered here in the United States. But small restaurants in Central America tend to get their meat from mom&pop farms, and that manages to alleviate just enough guilt for me to gorge myself on their fatty fried flesh. At least that's what I tell myself. Mmmmm... French fries, patacones, and yellow corn meal tortillas are all delicious accompaniments.

Heart of palm salad

While we're on the fast food topic, I must confess that we gave in and ordered a few such items, and ate them so quickly that I forgot to take photos...Costa Rican tacos are prolific, but don't be fooled by the name..down there it's nothing more than meat in rolled and fried tortilla, topped with cabbage, ketchup and mayonnaise. Sinfully delicious and oh, so, awkward. We also found ourselves in front of a pizza one night and it was epic. Half was covered with fresh pineapple chunks = yes!!! And the other half was littered with a huge range of veggies including cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, bell peppers and the always scintillating palmitas...Oh how I love hearts of palm, because let's face it, love and hearts go hand in hand. I got a bigger helping of the delicacy via ensalada de palmita which was littered with giant slices of the tangy temptation. Don't worry = palms are farmed in Costa Rica, so there's much less of the over-harvesting worry at much more of a reasonable price. You just can't get hearts of palm like you can in CR.

Ceviche in Panama City

And then there's the fish... I have about zero qualms eating fish wherever I am, so I dug into my aquatic friends quite mercilessly, often (literally) staring into their eyes with each bite. Yes, it's no wonder I needed a few days to adjust myself back to silverware, because let me tell you, it just doesn't seem possible to get at all that munchable meat without using the primate's greatest weapon. The fish we found ourselves face to face with was most often red snapper, followed by a healthy dose of dorado (known as mahi-mahi up here) and corvina. I enjoyed them all, and most of all when they were fresh off the boat. The Panama City fish market, located near Casco Viejo on Balboa, is certainly a place to find such wonders. And even there, in the big city, at the biggest fish market, they won't charge more than $7 for a whole fried fish and patacone-accessories.

Corvina and patacones at the Panama City Fish Market

This is also a wonderful place to pick up some ceviche, and a small paper cup costs between $1.25 and $3.25 depending on what sort of marine life you want inside. NOTE: Panamanian and Costa Rican ceviche is very comparable = heavy on the acid and spicy with onions. But for the freshest of the fresh, you often don't even have to swim to shore since it only takes a squeeze of lemon to act as a cooking agent.

Fried yucca with garlic

This is a metaphor that holds nicely, as some of the tastiest food on the trip was prepared not in a restaurant, or at a market, but in a friendly household kitchen. We were able to try some experimental Costa Rican concoctions thanks to our lovely friends in San Jose, including:

fried yucca with garlic
garbanzo beans and potatoes in a soy, ginger, cilantro sauce; yes, they love cilantro
sauteed yucca flowers with carrots
and lasagna made with a white and red sauce, cheese and using tortillas instead of noodles.

¡Wow! ¡Que rica!

Overall, this was a wonderful trip in more ways than one, and certainly because of more than one dish. I was introduced to quite a few new recipes, and I'm looking forward to trying them out Stateside. But, to be quite honest, I never want to master them completely, because I am always looking for a reason to head back down South.