OPEN KITCHEN

Welcome back!

2010-09-07T23:29:00.000-07:00

thanks

2008-02-24T01:27:00.000-08:00

A few hundred people braved the rain and crammed into Tartine for the “art opening.” Those who came hungry ate heartily. Those who weren’t hungry graciously accepted the bowls of sancocho and homebrewed pineapple beer I thrust at them.

A week later the show got some press in the Guardian.

Despite the boost, my confidence sagged. Nobody seemed to be reading the artist statement. The stack of postcards next to the cream and sugar didn't dwindle. Eyes never wandered above the top row of the pastry case.

I finally got realistic: people don’t come to Tartine for the "art"

Uh... what show?

Then one day I overheard a conversation at the coffee bar between two strangers going back and forth about their favorite photos. “I like that one in the corner… it always reminds me that there is a bigger world out there.” The other nodded in agreement. “I like that one over the door – every morning I come in gunning for my coffee and I see that picture of the mountaintop and the clouds and I just relax.” I butted into the conversation and hugged the two startled women.

The show got more press a few weeks later; this time in the weekend edition of the San Francisco Examiner. Read it here or click on the image to enlarge.

I may still be two grand in the hole but I would call the show a resounding success - none of which would have been possible without generous help.

A whole hearted thank you to Chad and Liz, who provided not just the stage, but a family, a home, and an always inspiring place to work. To my ruthless editors and most ardent supporters: Dad, Mom, and Jaz. To my resilient curator, Brianna, and the professional crew at Photoworks. To my friends in the Sierra Nevada Santa Martha. Mono tells me that Teti always asks when his gringo is going to come back to the Sierra. Very soon, abuelito, as long as I’m still “fresco” with El Cholo.

And finally to you, my dear readers. Gracias a todos.

Update (March 15)

A week ago I got a call, and the brief conversation ended like this:

Me. You're joking?
Caller. Nope.
Me. I've never been on TV.
Caller. That's okay.
Me. I don't even have a TV.
Caller. So then we'll see you at the studio on Friday?

Click on this link to see the wandering cook "LIVE"

behind the clouds, part one

2008-01-10T00:44:00.000-08:00

From Bogota, Fede sent me north to “the most beautiful place in the world.”

Parque Tayrona is Colombia’s prized ecological preserve along the Caribbean, where a vast civilization once thrived until the Spanish Conquest toppled it some four hundred years ago. I had read that a handful of Tayrona escaped into the Sierra Nevada mountains and their descendents still live in its isolating embrace. I remembered seeing some of their hand-woven bags – mochilas as they are called here – slung over the shoulders of Bogota’s fashionable elite. Rain and thick marine layers blocked my view of the mountains 40 miles away, until one morning a sunrise revealed the silhouette of their jagged snow-capped peaks tumbling and rising 18,000 feet above the sea.

Click on all photos to enlarge.

Everyone I asked told me that visiting the Sierra Nevada was impossible. Armed guerillas use the shelter of the mountains for drug and arms operations. Then there are the Arhuaco (arr-WHA-ko) indigenous who have preserved their way of life by shunning contact with the outside world. You can hire a guide to visit Ciudad Perdida, the stone remains of a hillside Tayrona settlement that some call “Machu Picchu off the beaten track.” But I was interested in the Arhuaco, not another trek to lonely ruins.

One evening before leaving the coast, I began chatting with an Arhuaco woman who was selling mochilas in the town outside the preserve. She told me about their subsistence life rooted in ancestral practices, and how extended families maintain at least two farms to grow crops at different elevations. Green plantain is the main year-round staple along with a range of fruits and other starchy vegetables. Coca leaves, carried by Arhuaco men in a special mochila and chewed throughout the day, are their sacred crop. They also grow coffee and sugarcane, some of which they sell to buy basic supplies.

“Ah,” she added, her eyes brightening, “there is really nothing an Arhuaco likes more than a cup of coffee and a little bread. Make an olla of coffee and offer some bread and you will have a dozen visitors.” What kind of bread do you make in the mountains? “Nobody makes bread there, we buy it from merchants who bring it up from the city.”

Was teaching bread baking a way into the Sierra Nevada? It seemed like a wild idea, but since we were developing a rapport I suggested that I could show her family how to make bread. She seemed intrigued, but the decision wasn’t hers. She had to discuss it with her family and, more importantly, she had to consult a mamo – a kind of shaman, she explained, who would divine whether my trip would go well or not. But she had more pressing business elsewhere and told me to call in a week about meeting again.

A week later I met Leticia at her home in Valledupar, a mid-sized city built right up against the eastern slope of the Sierra. Though her family in the mountains seemed open to bread baking, it was important to take things a su tiempo – at their own pace. “People have to get familiar with you, before you show up with a sack of flour and start making bread.”

And there is the business with the mamo, she reminded me. The Arhuaco believe that everything in the Sierra, from the rocks and clay to each living creature, has a spirit contributing to an overarching equilibrium. To maintain this harmony the Arhuaco rely on the advice and spiritual work of mamos, a priestly order of men who are chosen at birth and trained “in the wisdom of the ancients” for the first 18 years of their life without ever being allowed to see the light of day. Mamos, she told me, can perceive and commune with the unseen spirits of the Sierra. Though she had already spoken with a mamo about my trip, we had to go together to get his blessing.

Our departure date got pushed back, because “things are going on.” Leticia had learned that armed guerillas were in the area and there were signs of trouble. “Don’t worry. We’ll just let this blow over and go up later.” She went back to Parque Tayrona to sell mochilas for a holiday weekend, leaving me with her mother and nephew. During long days in the unrelenting tropical heat, the more I considered her vague details about the situation in the mountains, the more my curiosity turned into unease.

I knew from studying politics that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known locally as la guerilla) have been fighting a bitter and bloody civil war against the Colombian state for over forty years. In places beyond government control – like the Sierra – they fill the power vacuum. Though I trusted her when she said la guerilla doesn’t get involved with indigenous people, I began to worry that I was getting into something way over my head.

I had nearly convinced myself to return to Bogota, when Leticia told me to get my things ready because a jeep was coming to pick us up at 4:30 the next morning.

After a bouncy two hour ride up a valley that led into the mountains, we crossed a river and hiked through a dark forest to find the mamo. A rock wall marked his home at the crest of a ravine. Inside we found the yard filled with bright orange blossoms and bulging green gourds.

The mamo was not home, so we decided to come back later.

A long hike alongside the river brought us to the low farm of her father in law, Teti.

Seated near the doorway, surrounded by balls of hand-spun yarn, his wife was weaving a shoulder strap for a mochila.

Teti, his eighty years etched into a face framed by a cascade of white hair, took my hand in his big, callused paw, “Ahh… so you're the grrringo,” clearly amused at having a norteamericano in his house for the first time. Besides Leticia, he was the only indigenous person I had met so far who spoke Spanish.

Taking me for a walk around his finca, he pointed out his crops, from tangerines to plantain to neatly pruned bushes of coca.

He picked a few young leaves from one of the bushes. "When they harvest coca to make drugs they just rip all the leaves off the branch with one swipe. But when you harvest it to buchear – to chew – you approach the plant with more respect. You pick the leaves one by one as you would a ripe fruit, and then you toast them gently so that they dry."

He reached into his mochila and grabbed a pinch. I held out my hand. “Here in the Sierra if someone offers you coca – or anything for that matter – you always accept with two hands. If you accept with one hand it means that you are stingy, that you expect to receive only as little as you would be willing to give.”

He filled both of my hands, and following his example, I stuffed my mouth with the crispy leaves. Within moments my saliva moistened the ticklish clutter and I gathered them into a single mass and moved it to my cheek. You don't actually "chew" the leaves, but rather let them steep in the side of your mouth. I had chewed coca before – it helped in Bolivia when I was feeling the effects of altitude sickness or needed to settle an upset stomach – but I never got accustomed to their acrid odor and the obvious sense that I was sucking on leaves. This coca was sweeter and tasted like strong green tea. In five minutes, the left side of my mouth was overcome by a pleasant warmth that seemed to lull my cheek to sleep.

Over small cups of tinto Teti invited me to travel with him to his high finca to harvest coffee and make panela, the heavy blocks of crystallized raw sugarcane that is a staple in every Colombian household. The next day I tried to settle into the daily rhythms of the family, mostly helping out in the kitchen.

Rumors surfaced constantly about la guerilla. Over the next few days – from a series of experiences that for the safety of those still in the mountains cannot be shared on the web – I learned that once you enter the orbit of Colombia’s civil conflict, you are in a world of fluid rules where no move is innocuous. A documentary filmmaker who has done work in the Sierra summed it up best in a recent conversation: “The truth is, it is impossible to be innocent in Colombia. As soon as you work there, do research, or [somehow] get in the circle of action, you have to choose sides. It´s a lose-lose situation.” Any assumption that I could remain neutral disappeared, when someone joked that my white face and dark beard made me look like a guerilla commandante in the area. A cold shave in the river did nothing to slough off my growing ambivalence about staying and going farther into the mountains.

Leticia told me she had to go to the city for some pressing business. The thought of her leaving disquieted me, and there were plenty of good reasons to go with her. Nevertheless I couldn’t make up my mind. I wanted to stay and go with Teti to his high finca. But now, without the safety net of Leticia's reassuring presence and so much out of my control, I felt uncertain. I needed the advice of someone with more insight. The Arhuaco trust the wisdom of the mamo, I was convinced that I should too.

Leticia and I hiked the trail in silence until we reached the mamo's house. He was sitting under a fanning sycamore when we arrived. Like most Arhuaco he doesn’t speak Spanish, so Leticia explained why I was here and that I felt anxious about continuing my trip. He handed me a pinch of wool and instructed me to divide it into three balls. I clasped them in my right hand, and in my left he pressed three more. Telling me to wave my hands slowly around my temples and direct my thoughts to the little balls of wool, I was to conjure everything I had seen and felt over the past few days.

When I finished, the mamo took the balls and wrapped them carefully in two leaves. He walked to a small stone altar that faced the peaks rising above us to the west, closed his eyes and muttered what Leticia said was a short prayer. When he returned, he said: “Be smart, you’ll be fine.”

We parted at the river, and I found Teti waiting for me on his mule a little way up the path. Together we backtracked up the trail and, passing his home, climbed a steep path. When we broke through the trees, the entire valley opened before us. Above it now and heading to higher ground, I felt a surprising sense of release. I told him how contento I was to be in these mountains, walking with him up to his high finca.

“Yo tambien estoy muy contento, gringo.”

A lush mountain loomed in front of us. "That," Teti said, “is my finca.”

coming soon...

2007-12-30T14:48:00.001-08:00

Welcome back to the OpenKitchen!

It's been a long time since Bogota.

Below is the press release for OpenKitchen's upcoming photo show at Tartine in San Francisco. A series of posts are on the way that will provide the backstory for those who see the exhibit, and the whole story for those who cannot.

----------------

In 2006, Eric Wolfinger temporarily left his job at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco to help a friend open a restaurant in Bogotá, Colombia. Afterward he traveled northeast along the Caribbean to visit the Sierra Nevada mountains whose snow capped peaks tower 18,000 feet above the tropical shore. Locals warned such a trip would be impossible since the indigenous people who live in the Sierra shun outsiders, and armed guerilla groups control access.

For 500 hundred years, the Arhuaco – largest of four indigenous groups in the Sierra – have resolutely defended their cultural and political independence from the Colombian state. Besides encounters with armed guerillas who use the mountains as a base of operations, their only connection to the world beyond their self-sustaining life is through the coffee trade. Twice a year they send their harvest to a local market in the valley below where they buy supplies and a favorite luxury not made in the mountains: bread.

A chance meeting one evening with an Arhuaco merchant led Wolfinger to offer his bread baking skills for passage into the mountains. With the blessing of a Mamo (Arhuaco religious leader) and clearance from the local commander of the FARC guerilla group, Wolfinger visited the Sierra and lived with an extended Arhuaco family during the coffee harvest. Though the turbulent political climate prevented a second trip to teach them how to make bread, Behind the Clouds: Coffee and Custom in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada is a visual record of Wolfinger’s experience with this Arhuaco family.

Please click on the card above for opening reception and show details.

you just get there

2006-10-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

For the past three weeks, I've been on Fede's schedule. Out of bed by 6, we're sipping tinto (black coffee) and blasting salsa music on our way to Paloquemado, Bogotá’s bustling food market. Our first stop is the soup stand for short ribs and potatoes in clear broth, arepas (fresh corn pancakes), and hot chocolate. For the next frenzied half hour we sprint from vendor to vendor to pick up the day's essentials. From there we cart it all back to his little storefront restaurant downtown.

I met Fede seven years ago in Munich, Germany. Both fresh out of high school and postponing college to learn German, we struggled through morning grammar classes with Frau Petra, drank liters of beer at Oktoberfest and spent nights in the kitchen cooking the only dish we knew how - spaghetti with meat sauce. In six months we foreigners became fast friends but lost touch after leaving.

The next time I saw him - six years later in San Francisco - he was considering whether to accept a lucrative offer from a German telecom firm to work in

China

for three years, or return to

Colombia

to finish a degree in Industrial Engineering and write his thesis - a business plan for a small restaurant he was dreaming of.

A few months ago Fede sent me a short email: "Sopa y Seco opens in two weeks. . .if you get here around August I'll be able to take some time off." Since Germany he has promised to show me

Colombia

, always cutting the questions short with the same playful taunt: ¨you just get there.¨ I´m not going to tell you anymore - get there and you will see for yourself. When I finally set out from Lima, it took two weeks on a cargo ship in the Peruvian Amazon, a short plane flight, and taxi ride to 'get there.'

Sopa y Seco is smaller than a two-car garage, but somehow Fede managed to fit twenty seats and tables and a fully functioning kitchen into the space. Before opening he worked just two months in a restaurant. Admitting he could have learned the food side more, he says, ¨if I waited any longer, I knew I wouldn't have the guts to do it. The only way was to dive in with the faith I would be able to learn as I went along. I found the right location, signed the lease, and from there I went to everyone I had been bargaining with and said, ´remember that fridge I've been heckling you about for the past few months, well I need it by Monday!´ ¨ With 14 million pesos ($7,000 US) and hard bargaining at every turn, Fede opened his doors that next Tuesday. The people came. Free desserts and heatness (Fede's anglicized word for the phenomenon that heat makes otherwise bad food palatable, and sometimes even satisfying) compensated for sloppy service and lackluster food the first month.

Most of Fede's classmates from engineering school wear business suits and work in the tall office buildings in downtown Bogotá. Fede is there too, but in a bright red apron on the ground floor, scurrying around his downtown storefronthuequito. Though he only serves lunch, he works from morning to night. Evenings friends drop by his apartment and grumble about the office while running fingers around the edges of the mixing bowl. Fede's baking desserts for the next day, and with the chocolate cake in the oven he moves on to two mushy black bananas for banana bread. The recipe is from his grandmother, whom I notice he calls often for baking advice. When all the desserts are in the oven, he sits down and balances the books on a complex spreadsheet he designed when this was all just a thesis project.

Fede is trained to be a numbers guy, not a cook. He dutifully records every expense, right down to the 800 peso (US$0.20) buñuelos (fresh cheese and flour mixed together and deep fried) he snacks on at the market. When he talks about the restaurant he often uses words like 'utility' and 'value added.' But numbers and free desserts can only go so far, and he wouldn’t be where he is now without Doña Emma and Eli. To him they're gold: ¨Unlike anything I've ever done in my life, the restaurant connects me to something larger than myself. The three of us, we all need each other.¨ Eli couldn't find a job as a young mother, and Doña Emma had been unemployed for two years after losing her former job for being 'too old.' They regard Fede with a warm respect, and work hard to make the restaurant successful.
Eli is in charge of salads, sandwiches, and keeping Fede's scampering mind on task, while Doña Emma makes the soups and stir-fries. Her vegetable minestrone is the backbone of the menu. Other dishes may have off days, but everyone savors the rich golden broth. When Fede removes the chicken bones that have been simmering all morning, he always finds a little hunk of meat that she slipped into the soup when nobody was looking. For years the butcher near her house has set aside the good trimmings for her. They were the base for the 'calentado' (leftovers stew) that she lived on, but now they end up in the minestrone - a nourishing soup that reflects the scrappy, homegrown, wholehearted spirit of the restaurant.

The rest of the menu is an appetizing mix of sandwiches and rice dishes that Fede has enjoyed in his travels. Although roast beef 'Philadelphia' sandwiches and stir-fries may not be what people are used to eating, the idea of having a 'sopa' (soup) and a 'seco' (main course) for lunch is not unfamiliar to Colombians.

With the exception of the desserts and the minestrone, the food needed help. ¨Dude, Fede, you can't freeze mushy carrots and green beans and then put them into a stir-fry.¨ I promised I wouldn't change the menu, just tinker with some of the recipes. Thinking about the buñuelos he records in the little black book, I also asked for an expense account. 'Marica, Eric, what in the world is an expense account?' I've never had one before myself, but I explained that it's an agreement in which 'you give me some money and I spend it without having to record every little thing I buy.' I got my expense account for the market, and was at the stove for two weeks until we settled on a few dishes that people really liked, had a good 'utility' (i.e. tasty, consistent, inexpensive), and didn't turn the little restaurant into a smokehouse. The stir-fry with pork shoulder (slow-cooked ahead of time), eggplant, red pepper, fresh ginger and basil has become an overnight hit. With the kitchen in order, the service immediately improved - Fede now sells more desserts than he gives away.

Sopa y Seco is developing a regular lunch crowd and already turning a small profit. Still after studying his spreadsheet, he decides to start opening on Saturdays. ¨Our parents have given us the freedom – in so many ways – to pursue our dreams. We owe it to them and to ourselves to try.¨ The immediate goal today is to establish Sopa y Seco, but there is more.

Fede loves Colombia. A country of indescribable beauty with good people who grow up dancing salsa and lingering over cups of tinto, but struggle with limited opportunities. The troubled society's problems are compounded by the violence of a decades-long armed conflict fueled by poverty and the drug trade. In more private moments, he reveals the pressure of being among the few priveledged Colombians with a university education who have the opportunity to try new ventures. He doesn't know if this is the right path for him (of course, there was only one way to find out) but the decision to return to Colombia instead of going to China reveals his deep committment to build opportunities in his home country.

There are moments when he looks tired and overwhelmed by all the things that still need to be done. He constantly reminds himself to take things day by day - and a moment or two to appreciate its success up to now. In the next moment he's talking about long range plans to open more restaurants in which employees have a real stake in owning and running them. He’s come this far already. I have no doubt he'll get there.

¨If you want to post my grandmother's banana bread recipe, I should tell you that there is nothing she likes more than digging through her files to give someone a recipe. She will be very happy.¨ It's a simple cake - no distracting spices and nuts - that tastes like it was picked from a tree.

Pan de Banana Sopa y Seco

WET:
2 ripe (black!) bananas, ¾ cup safflower oil, ½ cup white sugar, ½ brown sugar, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DRY:
1 ½ cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda,1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon salt

Blend the wet ingredients to a smooth puree. Sift the dry ingredients together, and add them to the puree. Mix gently to combine, adding ½ cup grated carrots near the end. Pour the batter into a buttered loaf pan and bake at 350° for 45 minutes. Enjoy it with butter and a strong cup of tinto.

stepping out

2006-08-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

¿Adonde vas?
Machu Picchu.
¿Dedonde?
Voy caminando desde Cusco.
¿Caminando?
Sí...
¡Estas loco, gringuito!

From Cusco I wanted to reach Machu Picchu - some 60 miles away - on foot. Lots of people do it by hiking the famously beaufiful 'Inca Trail,' but they make reservations a year in advance. Yeeeah right. There were other walking options through the mountains, but it appeared I would need a guide. My last two guided hikes in Bolivia were spectacular - and safe - but I've learned that the pace is determined less by the scenery and the people you meet along the way than by your guide's back-to-back trip schedule. I wanted to go alone, on my own time.

After a frustrating afternoon trying to get information from the you-will-definitely-need-a-guide tour agencies surrounding Cusco's main plaza, I went for a pizza. A testament to the level of tourism in the area, there are more wood-oven pizza huecos (holes in the wall) per-capita in central Cusco than anywhere else in the world. After a week 'keepin it real' on market food, the cracker crust and creamy aiolí slathered atop bubbling cheese nearly brought me to tears. Halfway through my pie the couple at the next table finished their meal, and left behind the paper they had been studying over dinner - a hand drawn sketch of Cusco and the surrounding countryside.

The map showed a straightforward route to MachuPicchu. Climb the hills east of Cusco and traverse a few miles of foothills to the Valle Sagrado (Sacred Valley). Once in the Valley I could follow the meandering path of the Urubamba River all the way to the base of the ruins.

Alone in potato fields an hour from my front door.

Before leaving I bought a compass. The thing never left my pack. Whatever the colored-pencil sketch lacked in geographic accuracy, it made up for with the names of towns and landmarks that it identified along the way. A map made for asking directions.

Karín and her mother guided me and their three mules on an inconspicuous path along the falda (skirt) of the hills to the saddle where the trail descends into the Valley.

I had a late afternoon snack with a family harvesting potatoes. Coffee and watia (Quechua for dirt-clod potatoes)

Though I estimated the trip would last five or six days, I packed enough butter, flour, and powdered soup to last for two weeks. Why didn't it occur to me that I might not need that much food on a hike through one of the most fertile areas in Peru? The prodigious agricultural capacity of el Valle supported Inca imperial expansion, stretching from modern Ecuador to southern Chile at its zenith, and made possible the incredible settlements they built in the Valley. In 'anapia papas' I incorrectly implied that the potato was the most important staple of Andean civilization. Modern scholars agree that the potato alone could not have sustained the major population centers of Inca and pre-Inca civilization. To this day, the primary crop in the SacredValley is still a special variety of high-altitude maize. With kernels the size of nickels, the famous choclo del Valle is supposedly the tastiest corn on the cob in the world. If only I could stick around another six months till the harvest to try some.

This time of year the best way to sample the corn is in liquid form, lightly fermented in earthenware drums and served at room temperature in tall glasses for ten cents a liter. Oh yes, I'm talking again about chicha, affectionately known here as 'champagne of the Valley.' The first sip is not as immediately pleasant as the sweet grape chicha I wrote about in 'colchagua chicha', but the bitter tang of chicha de maiz makes a whole glass (or two) infinitely more refreshing. Every chance I got I rested my blistery feet at a chicheria. Once you figure out what the red plastic bag hanging from a pole at the doorway means, homemade chicha is easy to find. Chickens peck at your feet while tinny Andean pop music - no resemblance to the traditional flute-based folk music - drones on cranky old speakers.

Unless you've got the guts of a campesino, it's advisable not to drink chicha too close to bedtime as it continues to ferment for a while in your stomach. Frutillada - chicha dyed pink with fresh strawberry puree and airampo, a seed with antiseptic properties that stops the fermentation - is a lucky afternoon treat.

Chicha isn't just for drinking. I rested one night at a hostel that had a wood burning oven, and made pizza dough leavened with chicha. The señora of the house said the crust tasted like the bread of her childhood, before bakers 'got lazy' and started using packaged yeast. Another day I got to try adobo - pork shoulder braised in chicha, vegetables, and aromatics. Dios mio.

An old farmer noticed me limping past his house and invited me in for corn and beans. Two dozen fattened cuy (guinea pigs) squealed and scattered when we entered the kitchen. Birthday food, he said. His grandchildren arrived a bit later and I made everyone coffee (ahh, another half hour!) The boys offered to show me the salt terraces in the hills nearby.

Aww, don't want to carry your pack today? How about a hundred pound sack of salt? Salty spring water is diverted into thousands of pools - each one owned and worked by the same family for generations - and left to dry in the sun. Once crystalized it is bagged, sold to a distributor ($1.50 for 50 kilos), and hauled to a storage shack.

Luis, David, and José couldn't get enough of the frame-by-frame shots of themselves doing 'cartwheels.' They'd eat it, come running to see the pictures, laugh hysterically, and do it all over again. On the way back home they told me about the hidden lakes and streams in the mountains to the east - a half day's scramble up a steep ravine - that are teeming with big, dumb trout. They took a trip there the year before, carrying only fishing tackle, a frying pan, a bag of flour mixed with salt and spices, and two quarts of oil. For three days straight they slept in caves and ate wild potatoes and fried trout. When are you guys going to take me? 'Cuando regresas,' they replied, as if to make sure I would return.

After hanging out all day, cooking dinner, and helping me pitch the tent, they wanted to camp too. It was clear my three new friends would not take 'no' for an answer, so we slept four in my one-person tent.

'Pankaes' for breakfast the next morning.

La Familia Peralta

I was hoping to find someone to roast me my first cuy on the 15th. No such luck. But I did spend most of the afternoon on an uninhabited stretch of highway gorging myself on fat ripe tunas (cactus fruit)... and most of the evening tweezing the deceptively fuzzy spines from the webbing of my fingers.

An hour before sunset, I reached the town 'Km82.' The official Inca Trail starts on the other side of the river, and there are a dozen officers working around the clock to make sure nobody without a permit crosses to get to the trail. Luckily you don't have to cross to follow the more direct route along the river to MachuPicchu. Unfortunately PeruRail, the foreign-owned railroad monopoly that controls the passage from Cusco along the same river, also pays the guards extra to make sure no tourists avoid the $55 tariff (each way) by hiking along the tracks.

I met Darwin hanging out on a rock after an afternoon hunting birds with a slingshot. He knew a good trail around the guards. I offered to pay him a little more to take me to a good campsite. He had to be home before dark, but assured me I would find a good place to camp at some ruins a litttle further down.

The valley narrows until it becomes a steep gorge and the gentle Urubamba becomes a series of thundering cataracts that I often mistook for an oncoming train. As you descend the vegetation changes radically, and just a day after eating cactus fruit I was hunting guavas in the dense foliage that lined the tracks.

The next morning I was up at 4am, performing my morning ritual: fried eggs, coffee, and blister repair. I reached main terrace as the sun shot its first light over the craggy horizon.

Eight days after setting out I was on the train back to Cusco. The trip would have lasted a month had I returned on foot to take up the invitations to 'go fishing' and roast a pollo
or a cuy on my return. I'll walk both ways next time. With better shoes. And less food.

anapia papas, part dorman

2006-08-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

If there is one reader who would actually make a dirt-clod oven, it's my 11th grade English teacher, Mr. Dorman.

He is still the best teacher I've ever had. He led us through Moby Dick, read Of Mice and Men out loud (he does a better Lenny than Malkovich and had all of us bawling with him by the end), and somehow convinced us along the way that grades don't matter and that writing well does.

As happens with most good teachers, he was reviled by the administration. It's unclear whether he quit or got fired, but soon after I graduated Mr. D left beachfront La Jolla High for podunk Sedro Woolley, WA, where his wife had inherited a huge plot of old-growth forestland. The school administration hates him there too, but job security is guaranteed in a place like Sedro Woolley so he's building a log cabin and a tree house.

We keep in sporadic touch. In his last email, he noted that the article below was "submitted to Gourmet magazine, rejected, and thus submitted to the editor of OpenKitchen." Good move. The snobs at Gourmet wouldn't know a dirt-clod if it hit them in the face.

A true champion of the everyman, Mr. D is here published in full.

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Dirt-clod Potatoes, North American Style: Or, Dirt, Fire, Spuds, and a Microwave

Mr. Dorman
Sedro Woolley, WA

As our favorite Southern Californian continues his journey across South America, I know many of you will be tempted to try to make your own dirt-clod oven and roast potatoes. Well, you should. It's a wonderful experience in authentic cooking. What follows are a few helpful notes from someone just like you: i.e. someone who would starve to death without grocery stores and microwaves.

First, as you are constructing your 43rd dirt-clod oven (because the goddam thing has caved in on 42 previous attempts), don't feel bad: all South American farmers have advanced degrees in civil engineering and apparently nothing else to do but practice making dirt-clod ovens which have the same proportions as Saint Paul's cathedral.

List of necessaries (remember, Tradition is an important part of this adventure, so don't leave out any of the details):

1. Approximately 900 dirt-clods. It only takes 20 or so dirt-clods to construct an oven, but remember, you're going to actually build 43 of these bad boys before you complete one without the son-of-a-bitching roof collapsing in just as you lay the last clod on top. For a truly authentic oven, you should consult a theoretical mathematician to confirm that your clods are geometrically shaped so that, no matter how you rest them on top of another clod, they tip over. 2. A John Deere excavator (and, of course, the semi truck and flatbed trailer to get it to your cooking site). I made my oven the day after we dug out the basement of the house we are constructing. I had approximately 43,000 cubic meters of soil from which to select my dirt-clods, and I have to say that I couldn't have done it with less.
3. Thirty acres of land. The resulting distance to the next house will allow you to avoid offending your neighbors when your 42nd oven collapses and you scream out an apostrophic expletive involving a man in an unusually intimate relationship with his mom--a man who does not know the identity of his father who never married his mom--a man who, as a part of your loud exclamation, should be divinely disallowed from entering heaven.
4. Twelve potatoes. This will allow you to have one potato burnt worse than John Milton ever burnt a fallen angel, one potato as raw as the first time it was pulled out of dirt, and ten potatoes which will not fit in the tiny-ass oven you made.
5. A big, well-dried log of prime firewood.
6. A sharp hand-ax.
7. A flat-blade shovel.
8. Gloves.
9. Tongs.

Again, DO NOT OMIT ANY OF THESE NECESSARIES. IF YOU DO, YOU WILL FAIL.

The Basic Steps:
Step 1: Promise your wife a tasty, nutritious, authentic, South American dinner. Spend the morning boasting about how splendid a thing a dirt-clod oven is in the hands of a master chef.
Step 2: Spend about an hour walking around the gigantic piles of earth your excavator has dug up selecting just the right dirt-clods. You can collect all 900 at once, or just enough to make each failed oven. It's important that each clod be either the size of a golfball or the size of the statue's head in the Lincoln Memorial. The perfect clod is shaped so strangely that Salvador Dali would get seasick just looking at it.
Step 3: Since no semi-literate South American farmer is going to kick your ass, start with a circle of dirt-clods big enough to make an oven for about 40 potatoes. Carefully select clods to begin building up each level of your oven. Since you were overconfident, your oven will collapse while it still looks like a primitive corral for a quadruplegic guinea pig.
Step 4: Scale down your expectations. Try smaller ovens. You will know that you've got the right size when it doesn't collapse until you are setting the last clod on top to form the roof.
Step 5: By now you are on your 28th oven attempt. A satellite photo of you would look like a seated madman surrounded by little dirt piles.

Step 6: Your 30th oven did not collapse. But you forgot to make a little door through which to insert fire material and potatoes. Try pulling out one of the bottom clods. Pick the one shaped like Marilyn Monroe's hips. Pull it out quickly. Your oven will collapse. Again, at the top of your lungs, make reference to that man participating in an unusually intimate relationship with his mother. Don't just yell it as four mere syllables. Put your dirty hands on your ashen cheeks like Edvard Muench's Scream and howl it out as four entirely distinct words.
Step 7: Your wife is becoming agitated--well, actually downright terrified. Go apologize to her. When she suggests that the neighbors might also need an apology tell her they can stuff a dirt-clod up their intolerant asses.
Step 8: Your 43rd attempt has remained oven-shaped. Unfortunately it's so small that there will only be room for some chips of alder wood and two medium potatoes. Nonetheless, you are a survivor, a man who could live off the land, a true dirt-clod chef. Do not sneeze, walk, or talk near your oven. If your wife gets near your oven, calmly warn her to stay away: the best way to do this is to frantically wave your arms over your head while screaming something incoherent prefaced with "Jesus H. Christ, woman!".
Step 9: Time to cook, baby. Since you are so covered with dirt you look like Caliban in a high school version of The Tempest, ask your wife to wash a couple of potatoes for you. When she asks why she should wash food that is going to be stuck into dirt, tell her she just doesn't understand authentic South American cooking.
Step 10: While the spuds are being scrubbed (which you realize is a stupid thing to ask of your wife, but DO NOT ADMIT IT), start the fire. Since the door in your oven is so small that mice could not get in, this will be quite a challenge. Use the tongs to put kindling and small chips of wood into the oven. Light it. Yell to your wife to close the windows of the house so she doesn't die of smoke inhalation. Continue using the tongs to add fuel to the ¨fire¨.
Step 11: Surprisingly enough, you've got a small oven full of smoldering coals. Congratulations. Now use the tongs to slide two potatoes into your oven.
Step 12: The next step is to collapse the oven on top of your potatoes so that they can cook more efficiently. You will not want to do this, since it took you seven hours to build this pile of dirt-clods. Be brave. At this point, you will discover that the oven refuses to collapse, which is surprising since the 42 previous ovens collapsed because a man in Australia swatted a fly. Push harder. Harder.
Step 13: Your oven has collapsed. Unfortunately it did not collapse on top of the potatoes and the coals. The steaming hot clods are rolling across the lawn, leaving your potatoes exposed. However, since you did not omit any of The Necessaries, you have a pair of good gloves. Grab those smokin' clods and pile them on the potatoes. Now strut around the yard as if you were the man who first invented food. Pump your fist once or twice. Speak calming words to your wife before she calls for help.
Step 14: The correct time for cooking as the South American farmers do it is nine days. However, you promised your wife dinner, so you only need leave them in for an hour. They're perfect when the whole neighborhood smells like roasted dirt. Pull those spuds out. They'll look like the derrieres of Renaissance angels on top and Hawaiian lava rock on the bottom.
Step 15: Place potatoes in microwave oven for five minutes. Ordinarily it takes eight or nine minutes to cook two potatoes in a microwave, so you can rationalize your 10 hours of work by explaining to your wife that it saved three minutes of microwaving.
Step 16: Crack them babies open and pretend like a charcoal briquet is your favorite food.
Step 17: Read openkitchenblog.blogspot.com at least once a week for good cooking ideas!

anapia papas

2006-08-07T17:59:00.000-07:00

I must have asked for directions fifty times. Most people haven't even heard of Anapia – a small island archipelago that straddles the Bolivia-Peru border on Lake Titikaka. To get there from La Paz you make five dizzying connections, traveling the last spectacular leg across the lake by sailboat. All the kids on the boat knew 'La Profesora,' and one of them led me through the town and across harvested fields to the home of Jose and Eugenia where my college mentor and now good friend, Heather, was living for the summer.

I have never received a warmer welcome from a complete stranger. Heather told Jose I knew how to make pizza and he was practically bouncing with excitement. He had tasted pizza for the first time a few weeks before and still beamed when he described the meal. He even had a new woodburning stove – a ´smokeless´ design donated by a local NGO - to bake it in. As we made dough the next day, he regaled me with stories of lazy Sunday afternoons spent slow-cooking a whole lamb underground. The new oven didn't heat enough to cook pizza, and the family pigs got the raw dough in their gruel the next morning. We did not make the lamb either, but in the birthplace of ´la papa´, lamb is just a sideshow.

Jose worked his way up the field in front of his house, loosening the dry soil with a pickaxe as he went. Behind him Eugenia gathered armloads of baseball-sized dirt clods. They made a small ring two feet in diameter and in a few minutes had balanced one clod on top of another to form a small dome. After carefully removing a few clods near the base, they built a fire at the opening. They fed the fire constantly from a waist high pile of dried crop detritus from the July harvest. Flames spouted out through the walls and the baking earth sweetened the smoke. Heather and Eugenia disappeared to the dry cellar, returning with blanket that sagged with 20 pounds of potatoes.

Family and friends began to arrive, and half an hour later the pile of dried potato plants had been reduced to a few cups of smoldering ashes. The walls were black with soot and the dome seemed to quiver as the heat bent the light around it.

The oven was ready. Jose tossed some fresh soil over the ashes, and pitched the potatoes one by one through the opening. When the oven could swallow no more, he collapsed the roof of the dome and nestled the remaining potatoes between clods. With the pickaxe he smacked each clod so that they disintegrated and spilled hot soil into the voids between the little round spuds. He covered the mound with more soil to seal in the heat, and sent me across town to Señor Felix for a wheel of fresh cowmilk cheese.

I got back as they were digging up the mound. You gingerly unearth a potato, brush off the dirt and bite through the crisp smoky skin, it is no leap of the imagination to think that by some magic alchemy the fire transformed the gritty soil into nourishing gold nuggets.

Gold nuggets indeed. All the plundered treasure of Peru could not equal the value of this gift to the world. The potato nourished agricultural civilization in the Andean highlands for over 8000 years - from the earliest settlements along the banks of Lake Titikaka all the way to the Inca who built their fantastic empire sustained by the starchy staple. This engine of civilization-building was unknown outside the Andes until Spanish conquistadors brought it back to Europe as a ´botanical curiosity´ in the late 16th century. In two hundred years the potato spread throughout Europe to become one of the principle foodstuffs for workers of the industrial revolution. Today farmers across the globe harvest over 300 million tons of potatoes, making it the fourth most important food crop in the world. http://www.cipotato.org/potato/potato.htm

Jose and Eugenia plant a dozen varieties to ensure a bountiful harvest. There’s the crazy guy a few houses away who only plants one variety that grows fast and big, and they wonder out loud if he's really a gringo and when the next dry year will put him back into line. On the blanket spread out in front of us we counted six varieties - it had been a good year. Some were faintly purple. Others deep gold. Some were cloying and starchy. Others buttery smooth.

Baked potatoes without butter? It is Peruvian custom not to serve drinks until after the meal, and I struggled to swallow first few until they brought out the dipping sauce. At the center of the pile Eugenia nestled a bowl of opaque gray liquid: water mixed with a little salt, lime juice, and powdery clay. Why go through all the trouble to peel the potato only to dip it in dirt? The special clay has been mined since Inca times and is valued both as condiment and digestive aid. It’s an acquired taste.

Though they eat them at every meal, this harvest-time lunch is a true celebration of the potato. The oven is fired with the potato plant, and the potatoes themselves are cooked in the same soil from which they were pulled. Prepared this way, they are the closest thing you get to tasting the earth.

The meal is also an affirmation of their way of life. In this day and age it is hard not to be conscious of alternatives - even on a remote island - but respect for tradition and the economics of small farming keeps farmers on Anapia to a strict set of farming practices that has sustained their ancestors for generations. Crop rotation, diverse planting, and a deep caring respect for their animals ensure healthy soil and bountiful harvests.

I lingered by the blanket after lunch, peeling a small mound of potatoes. I wanted to make it up to the family for the pizza disappointment. Gnocchi, a potato-based pasta from Italy, seemed appropriate. The kids, Jesus and Mamuchi, got a kick out of rolling and shaping the pasta. The meal was a hit, but I doubt if they will ever make gnocchi again. Learning to make pizza is one thing, but it's clear they are not looking for 'new and interesting' ways to cook a potato.

Have your own potato celebration. Invite as many friends as you can, and buy a pound or two of potatoes per person. (It's a lot, but think of all the ways you can prepare a leftover potato: hashbrowned, homefried, mashed, etc.) Get as many different kinds as you can find. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Cut the big ones in half and put them all together in a tray. Sprinkle a little water overtop and cover snugly with aluminum foil. Bake the potatoes until you can pierce them without resistance with a knife. First check after 40 minutes.

Alternatively, find the nearest construction site or low-key park and build yourself a dirt-clod oven.

Serve the potatoes in a pile at the center of a blanket - you eat this sitting on the ground! - with a small dipping bowl of water mixed with lime and salt. Feel free to substitute melted butter for clay in the mix. Mexican ´queso fresco´is a decent approximation of Señor Felix's salty fresh cheese and is available in most supermarkets. We also ate tuna salad - tuna, chopped onions, salt, pepper, little bit of mayo and lime juice - and it was a perfect accompaniment.

bolivia, from scratch

2006-07-24T17:40:00.000-07:00

The sun shot its last light between a few craggy peaks in the Apolobamba mountain range in northern Bolivia. Guzman and I were still miles from camp when Seferina was ready for a rest. She had been walking in front of us and now had a chance to study the gringo for a moment. 'So, how many eggs do you have in there anyway?' she asked, pointing at my folded sleeping pad.
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Three weeks ago Marko and I awoke shivering and heads throbbing at the checkpoint on the Chile-Bolivia border. On the Chilean side a lady bundled against the chill was selling steaming cups of mate de coca (tea infused with coca leaves) to people arriving from lower altitudes. With a full thermos of the age-old remedy for altitude sickness and still another hour before the border opened, we gravitated to a group huddled around a dying fire grilling llama for breakfast. Marinated overnight in garlic, it was chewy, earthy and pungent - a world apart from the completo (hot dog with avocado and mayo) we had eaten the night before in the city of Iquique on the coast.

We arrived in La Paz (13,000 feet) in the late afternoon and headed for the central market. Produce from all over Bolivia - from the high altiplano to the low lying jungle - is trucked into the capital and set out in overflowing displays over 30 square blocks. Freeze-dried potatoes (frozen in glacial streams for two weeks and then dried on rooftops) are sold along side papaya and passion fruit. Except CocaCola everything is sold in its raw unprocessed form - including the namesake ingredient in Coke's original 'original secret recipe.'

We ate every meal at the market. After a week Marko and I had become caseros, something between regular customers and amigos at our favorite vendors. Caseros get a good price and some friendly conversation. At the health tonic pushcart, Antonio asks about my ailments of the day and prepares the appropriate bittersweet herbal mix. He seems to make the same concoction every time, but it still cures everything from a 'loose stomach' to a hangover. For breakfast we went to Marko's main casera, Doña Juana, whose juice stand is always well stocked with carrots, fresh fruit, raw eggs and beer. The latter two are blended with sugar to make batido, the local energy drink. (It works, and I would probably drink it more often if it didn't make my burps taste like mayonnaise). Afternoons a block away two ladies sell tukumanas (fried turnovers filled with delicately spiced potatoes and meat) and grilled skewers of thinly sliced beef heart. The big bowl of peanut sauce at their stands keeps me coming back.

Doña Vicky, my lunchtime casera, shares a roof with six small kitchens. While the other cooks are serving two or three people, her four benches are always full. Day laborers lunch alongside business suits - maybe divorced looking for a taste of good home-style cooking. Sit down and immediately a big bowl of soup appears with a small bone with a bit of meat to chew on. Next a choice of two main courses – always a variation of meat and potatoes which changes every day. The food is simple and the portions huge. I can't figure out how she stays open charging 6 Bolivianos (US $.65) for lunch, but after twenty years in the same spot, she's as close as you get to being a star chef at the La Paz central market. I'm waiting for her incredible albondigas ahoghadas (drowning meatballs) to make it back to the rotation before I leave the city.

Marko and I spent nearly two weeks exploring the city and hiking in the nearby mountains. When he left on the morning bus back to Chile, the walk back to the hostel seemed long and I was wondering what to do next. Someone told me about the Apolobamba mountain range. I found a 60 mile trail that connects two towns near the Peru-Bolivia border and hired Guzman, my guide for the five day trek.
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After a bumpy twelve hour bus ride from La Paz, Guzman and I started out on the “trail,” which is the foot path for everyone living and working in the mountains between Charzani and Pelechuco. At lower altitudes the trail winds through terraced hillsides that have been farmed the same way for generations. The harvest was a month ago and the wheat and peas were dry enough for threshing. Higher in the mountains where only stubby grass grows, you pass the solitary outposts of Alpaca shepherds. Still higher you wake up to the rumble of dynamite and the ping of pick axes – sounds of gold mining.

Late on the second day out we were walking with Seferina who was returning to her pueblo. She offered to let us camp in the potato fields in front of her stone-and-thatch home. She was a little disappointed I wasn't carrying any eggs but accepted our invitation to join us for cheese and crackers before bed.

The next morning her older sister Francisca was preparing soup over a small fire when we stopped to say goodbye. As I ducked into the low kitchen, she said something in Quechua – one of two indigenous spoken languages in Bolivia. She spoke no Spanish so we sat in silence as she finished the soup. Wheat, onions, and dried lamb meat had already been simmering for half an hour. She pulverized dried potatoes into flour, peeled and chopped three different kinds of fresh potatoes and emptied everything into the simmering broth.

I pulled out my pocket sized Quechua grammar book gotten in trade for my guide book (which had no mention about Apolobamba). Hoping to find something to start a conversation - or at least make her feel more comfortable with the gringo in her small kitchen, I randomly opened it to 'can I help you with something?' What luck! I pronounced it so poorly I could hear her sister laughing outside. Before I could find something else in Quechua to butcher - I had in mind “can I peel potatoes,” Francisca turned and pointed to her head. Duele mi cabeza. Duele. Duele. From my first aid kit I fished out two Advil for her headache. Everyone knows gringos always carry pills.

After Francisca finished the soup with salt and herbs, we all ate outside on piles of straw amidst drying potatoes. It was delicious. The broth was meaty and rich, and the wheat and potatoes made it feel satisfying. Every other bite there was a little burst of coriander. She had never heard of coriander, and she produced a dried green herb that looked a lot like oregano. As the Spanish missionaries worked their way through South America and Mexico, they named every pungent green herb 'oregano.' (Substitute Mexican oregano for Italian oregano and you end up with a marinara sauce that tastes more like Pozole.) Apolobamba oregano tastes unmistakably like coriander.

Suddenly Francisca broke into tears. As Leonora explained to us in Spanish, her sister has been having headaches for two years now as her eyesight has gotten worse and worse. Six months ago she stopped weaving. I offered eye drops and she accepted without hesitation. Remembering Mom's treatment for surfers’ eyes, I cradled her head and with some difficulty put a few drops into each eye. Then I doused my handkerchief with water, folded it over her eyes and lightly rubbed her forehead. I was tentative at first, but it was clear that it was welcome.

After half an hour her headache was gone and she claimed to see better. Next week her sister is taking her to La Paz (her first time there) for a check-up at the free clinic run by Cuban doctors. I'm sure they can do more for her.

Doña Vicky's Albondigas Ahoghadas

For the meatballs combine the following in an appropriate sized bowl:
2 pounds ground beef
3 eggs
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground pepper
1 Tbsp. parsley, finely chopped
1 onion, diced
1 tomato, grated on a cheese grater
1 cup bread crumbs
2 Tbsp salt

Ahoghada sauce:

1 Tbsp. dried ground chile california
3 onions, diced
1 tomato, diced
1 cup green peas
1 cup water
salt to taste

1. Before going to the trouble of shaping all the meatballs, preheat a pan, add a tablespoon or two of oil, and cook a tester. Add seasoning as you see fit.
2. Shape the meatballs into the size of golf balls. Cook them in batches of five or six. Take your time and don't crowd the pan - you want to keep the pan hot so the meatballs get nice and brown.
3. While the meatballs are cooking preheat another pan and add two tablespoons oil. Add the onions, chile powder and tomato and saute over low heat. When the onions are soft and transluscent, add the peas and water. Simmer for a few minutes and add salt to taste.
4. Transfer browned meatballs to the pan with the sauce. Simmer everything for a minute and serve with rice and boiled potatoes. Top with chopped parsley.

Sopita Apolobambina
To capture the spirit of Bolivian soups, boil whatever you have on hand until tender and season according to personal taste. Potatoes - dried and fresh - are always present. Wheat, corn, quinoa, and sometimes even semolina flour are used interchageably to fortify soups. City cooks make the broth with beef bones whereas country cooks use lamb. The latter has a much more assertive flavor.

3-4 lbs. beef bones or lamb shanks
3 lbs potatoes (use multiple varieties if possible), cut into half inch chunks
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 cup wheat berries
1 tsp coriander seed
salt to taste

1. Put the bones in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and skim off the white foam that collects at the surface. Simmer for forty minutes.
2. Add the wheat, onion and carrot and simmer for another fifteen minutes.
3. Add the potatoes and simmer unitl tender. Add salt to taste.
4. This step is optional but will yield a more substantial broth: transfer four cups of broth and half the potato chunks to a blender and blend till smooth. Return puree to broth and stir well.
4. Heat a pan over medium heat and add the coriander seed. When you hear them start to pop, remove the pan from the heat. Add seeds to soup and let it sit for a few minutes before serving. The meat should be fall apart tender.

chilean spice

2006-06-21T12:44:00.000-07:00

We went south. The rain subsided as a new swell filled in. At a little known left point, I got a three day tube-riding lesson of a lifetime from Marko a.k.a. TLS a.k.a. BarrelBoy.

Yes, that´s Prof. Marko in the tube, and me in the front row.

Of course I look relaxed - the bottom is sand.

There we met Chris, a friendly San Francisco surfer traveling by truck with his mellow old friend, the Griz. He had two extra seats and a huge rack that easily accomodated all six of Marko´s surfboards. (Marko is the same guy who teases me for traveling with knives and a little chopping block. TLS.) Griz graciously gave up shotgun, and together we explored over a thousand miles of coastline up through the desert in the north. Pine trees gave way to scrub, and the coast eventually became a rocky Martian landscape.

Even though we camp most of the time now, the towns we pass through keep us well provisioned. For lunch we make sandwiches heaped with cold cuts and vegetables. For dinner we make stew with sausage. Every few days we refill our water jugs, clean out a vegetable stand, and then hunt for a bakery and a butcher shop.

Like their European ancestors, Chileans are fresh bread fanatics. Bakeries are everywhere, from impossibly small storefronts to big city supermarkets. They all make the same two rolls: a flat disk laminated with a little lard, and an airier version with a crisp crust. The bread stales quickly, but when every bakery makes two or three batches a day, there is always bread for sandwiches.

Butchers are harder to find in big cities, but they still thrive in small towns. Take Gabriel at ¨Carnes Pucon.¨ He works six days a week and has two cell phones and a land line. Every Monday, two whole cows and four pigs are delivered to his doorstep. He was making sausages when I walked in.

Like most small butcher shops, Gabriel sells raw cuts of beef butchered to order from the carcass hanging on the wall behind him and a specialty product made in-house. Over the past month I have become obsessed with ¨arrollado de cerdo¨ (literally translated as ¨pig roll-up¨), a delicious cold-cut beautifully marbled with fat and flavored with a standard but magical spice mix. Sorry, no arollado, but he uses the same seasoning in his ¨longaniza¨ sausage and was sure I would like it. Following his instructions I cooked it till crispy, and was rewarded with a sausage that is sweet like Kielbasa but enlivened with savory bursts of fat and spice.

When I returned the next day, Gabriel generously laid out his entire spice rack for me to see. Ground cumin, ají (paprika), oregano, fresh garlic, and salt. No secret, he said, laughing when I recounted a previous experience with a tight lipped butcher. Everyone uses the same thing! (A week later I passed a guy on the street selling trinkets and snacks alongside a small display of garlic and three little spice packets.)

Over glasses of his homemade apple chicha – more bitter than the grape chicha, but no less alcoholic - we chatted about the future of small butcher shops like his in Chile. Twenty years ago butchers were everywhere. With the growth of supermarkets and large-scale meat processing, he predicts there won´t be any left in twenty years. What about a successor? His son doesn´t want to be a butcher – he´s working his culo off in the capital to become a chef.

If there is a secret to Gabriel´s longaniza, it´s that he makes it fresh every day. If you don´t have a butcher like Gabriel around the corner, it´s not hard to make your own. The most important ingredient for sausage is the meat. It may be hard to find ground pork with fat in supermarkets, but it´s worth the search. Look for markets that still do some butchering in-house. Whole Foods is a good place to start. Talk to the butcher. If you can´t find it, lean meat will work. You can also use turkey which also tastes wonderful when prepared with these spices. Dan, try it with tofu and post a comment!

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2 lbs. GROUND PORK with fat

4 cloves GARLIC, smashed, peeled, and finely chopped

2 Tbsp PAPRIKA (If your local supermarket has a Mexican foods section, ¨Chile California molido¨is the closest approximation to the Chilean ¨aji¨)

2 Tbsp OREGANO (Mexican oregano is best here and will be hanging right next to the ground chile powder)

one half tsp GROUND CUMIN

1 Tbsp SALT

Gabriel passes the meat and garlic through the grinder together. You can approximate the effect by smashing the garlic with the broadside of your knife before you peel and chop it.

Thoroughly mix all the above ingredients in a bowl and let sit for 3 hours to let the flavors mingle. If you have the equipment and the knowhow to fill sausage casings, go for it. Otherwise form the mix into logs, patties, or meatballs.

If cooking sausage on the stovetop, open the windows, preheat the pan, add a tablespoon of oil, and carefully lay the sausage into the pan. Leave it alone for few minutes to develop a nice crust. Flip it. After a few minutes on the second side, cut off a corner to see if its done. Otherwise grill the sausage like a hamburger, cooking both sides till done.

The sausage is good with eggs, between bread, in lentil stew, or all by itself.

colchagua chicha

2006-06-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

Chile has a reputation for great surf, not great food. I arrived in Santiago where I met up with Janice and ate my first ¨completo¨ - a hotdog in a bun drizzled with ribbons of mushed avocado, ketsup and mustard - before heading south through the Colchagua Valley for the little coastal town where Marko, my younger brother, has been surfing his brains out since January. Arriving at sunset, the first wave we saw was a beautiful left peeler with nobody on it. On the next wave someone dropped in, sped way out to the shoulder and then wrapped a long arcing cutback to the foam. Marko. Welcome to Chile. I went to bed dreaming of the next day, hardly noticing the patter on the tin roof of the hospedaje.

We came with the first rain of the season, and woke up to what Marko said was the worst surf he had seen in the past four months. For two days we did nothing but drink thermos after thermos of tea. Cabin fever setting in, I started to think about all those beautiful vineyards in the Colchagua Valley we sped past on the way here. The valley is one of Chile´s most prolific winemaking regions and is only a half hour away.

Our first stop was an apple stand. For less than 25 cents a kilo, the farmer was giving away beautiful fujis. The first bite brightened my mood. I haven´t tasted an apple this crispy and sweet in years. The farmer explained that the secret is the Colchagua Valley´s climate. Apples ripen in the hot summer afternoons, but the cold winds from the Andes to the east and the Pacific to the west cool the fruit from dusk till dawn, allowing them to sweeten to the point that anywhere else the fruit would turn to mush. Same with the grapes.

It´s late fall in Chile. Even a month after the last grape harvest, the valley still radiates abundance. Fall sets ablaze the leafy canopy of acre after acre of vines. In every backyard we see a leafless tree drooping with the weight of a hundred ripe persimmons. Gnarled grape vines overhang the entrance of every home. Some of the vines still sag with fat bunches of grapes. Are they for decoration? Or might each house have its own vintage?

Later I ask the woman overseeing a wine tasting and pouring glasses at 1000 pesos ($2 US) a pop. The grapes overhanging every porch are NOT for wine. Most people from the valley don´t even like it. Decoration? She giggles. ¨Es para la Chicha.¨ For the what? ¨La Chicha.¨ The homebrew. The grapes are pressed and fermented for about two weeks. You have to drink Chicha at the just the right time. Too soon, no alcohol. Too late, sour. It´s hard to buy, but she sends us to a little unmarked store up the road where “con suerte” we can sample La Chicha.

After three passes we find the place. ¨Tiene Chicha?¨ we ask. The lady´s eyes light up. She pulls a jug from underneath the counter, pours a glass, and hands it to my brother. The cup is refilled and makes the rounds. No charge. Chica is what the locals get wasted on. Cloudy and pink, sweet but tart and slightly fizzy, it is more like wine´s rowdy younger brother. After two glasses you feel the alcohol. (I had a brief flashback to my first bar-mitzvah - sloshed after a dozen thimbles of Manischevitz.) In Chica there is a whisper of wine, if only because it´s made from the same grapes. I wouldn´t pair Chicha with a rack of lamb, but it beats sangria for any party. Too bad it can’t be bottled. You just have to be here two weeks after they pick the grapes.

We bought the whole jug for three bucks. The weather stormed two more days. With the jug almost empty we decided to head farther south. No surf yet but we scored perfect Colchagua Chicha.

have starter, will travel

2006-05-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

"Pick off the meat, throw out the eyes, come get me when you're done." I peered into the steaming stockpot and poked at one of the heads bobbing on the surface. The pig's head slowly turned, and a clouded eye emerged from the the sweet smelling broth, its empty gaze finding mine. Its ear was hanging by a shred. The skin around its mouth was frayed enough to expose a grim, toothy grin. I smiled back.

Alone in the prep kitchen, with six pigs' heads to pick, what stars had aligned to bring me here? How lucky am I? With zero professional experience and no formal training, I was there to try out for a kitchen apprenticeship. With virgin fingers – the nerves not yet numbed by repeated burns – I gingerly filled a deep steel pan with the steaming hot pickings. When the skulls were clean, I went back to the main kitchen to get the Chef.

"No eyes in here?" He fished around and found two. "You got the brains?" He tugged on a bone at the base of the skull and scooped the brains into the pan. He tasted the meat and added a handful of salt, a few pinches of orange zest, and a generous splash of Vin Santo. He tasted it again. More salt. More wine. As he ladled the mix into a heavy linen stocking, he explained that once refrigerated, the natural gelatin released during cooking binds the mixture into sausage form. "Sopresatta." I was in awe; people actually get paid to do this. When the day was over I thanked him and left. There were a few other people trying out, so I was to call back in a few weeks.

That was almost two years ago. I moved to San Francisco and commuted to Eccolo in Berkeley to take my place on the fry station – and do whatever else was needed. Perhaps foolishly, I did not commit to a full year, and when my three-month apprenticeship ended, they turned me loose. I worked on the line in two other kitchens in the city and volunteered in many more. It hasn't all been Sopressata, believe me. Cooking professionally is a grind. You work your ass off, get yelled at, and at the end of the shift you get a beer and a meager paycheck. But you're learning. And you are surrounded by people who are also underpaid, but they are learning too. So you all keep at it.

The two-to-midnight schedule afforded me time to surf in the morning. I stayed sane by paddling out in whatever Ocean Beach offered (mostly cold, shifty slop). On my days off I taught after-school cooking classes at a local middle school. Though I can't claim any of my students eat healthier food or cook more at home - my stated goals - we managed make some delicious food. That pasta in the picture still has two more passes to go. It reached about 50 feet.

Little by little, the romance of cooking gives way to reality. You do the same thing night after night: tickets come in, the food goes out. You jump in your seat when you hear the whine of a ticket machine at other restaurants. Every chef I met was either unhappy or unhealthy, or both. Is this a life?

When mulling over difficult questions, the best place to go in San Francisco is a bakery on the corner of 18th and Guerrero. For five bucks you get the best croissant and a well-made capuccino (a rare thing, anywhere). The inside of their croissant is satiny and chewy, and the outside as like tissue paper painted with butter, rolled up, and baked into caramel. Once you have a Tartine croissant - baked dark in the brick oven - the rest look like microwave imitations. Midway through the second one, it occurred to me that I might want to learn how to make these things before I leave town.

Why not offer to be a kitchen-bitch at the bakery? I stayed at Tartine for almost a year. First I volunteered, and when their tart-shell lady left a month later, I took her job. Not the most interesting work, but now I can make tart shells with the best of them. Sometimes I came in at 4am to help out on the croissant shift, but by that time it was the bread that captivated me. Tartine makes the best bread I have ever tasted. Period. Hands down. The best.

I had good rapport with Chad the bread baker (he owns the bakery with his wife, Liz) and after a few months he let me come in on Fridays to learn his French country bread. He's a soft-spoken guy who is regarded as one of the best artisan bakers in the country. In the twelve years that he's been baking, I'm the third person he'd taken on.

Three basic ingredients (flour, water, and salt), combined with adept handiwork, and a scholarly understanding of natural fermentation render a loaf of bread like the one in the picture above. Crisp crust gives way to an open irregular crumb structure on the inside that seems to melt in your mouth. Unlike the kind of cooking I was doing before which requires speed, mechanical skill and good short-term memory, traditional bread baking is a slow process that engages the intellect as well as the the senses. You're working with a wild yeast culture that has moods and is sensitive to the weather. Use it too early and the bread won't rise. Too late and it tastes sour. Catch it when it's just right, it leavens your loaves and leaves behind a whisper of fermentation. I was obsessed with bread.

I convinced Chad that he had the ultimate surfing schedule. By the end of my stay I was living above the bakery, teaching him how to surf in the morning and baking bread with him and his assistant, Shiho, afternoons and evenings. Bread for surfing. Not a bad trade, right? We are now good friends.

Life got real good in San Francisco. I was working for a happy chef. The challenge of bread consumed me. Even so I had become restless. Which brings me to the here and now. In six hours I fly to Chile with a surfboard, knives, and my wild yeast bread starter. From there I'll find my way north through Peru, Argentina, Bolivia and Colombia until September. We'll see. When tramping, plans are apt to change. If I eat something I like, I'll learn how to make it. Open Kitchen will be my record. Welcome.