Next up, Guatemala! We flew into Guatemala City and took a shuttle to the historic city of Antigua. The entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The streets are all cobblestone.
We made a quick hike up the Hill of the Cross (so named for the cross monument on the hillside) for a panoramic view.
Beautiful architecture abounds:
This must be my house!
Actually, here’s the place where we stayed. It opened to a beautiful open-air courtyard with a lovely garden.
We took a cooking class on Friday night. I made the sauce for the main dish, pepián, which is a traditional Guatemalan stew:
– Grill (char) tomatoes and tomatillos in a pan. Remove and add to a bowl of water.
– Grill (char) two types of chilis in a pan. Remove and add to bowl.
– Toast pumpkin seeds in a pan. Remove and add to bowl.
– Toast sesame seeds in a pan. Remove and add to bowl.
Then take everything in the bowl, pour it into a blender, and blend to a purée, adding some water to get the right consistency.
Separately, boil potatoes, squash and chicken. These are combined with the sauce.
We cooked rice and boiled beets.
We made tortillas from scratch. After getting the dough to the right consistency, we took fist-sized balls, kept our hands wet so they souldn’t stick too much, and then patted them from hand to hand into discs before dropping them on the pan to cook. Flip once.
For desert, we created a sauce of cacao and black bean paste. We mashed plantains, formed them into discs (much like the tortillas), put a scoop of sauce inside, rolled them shut, and grilled them for a few minutes all the way around.
The results:
Everything was delicious (though I abstained from the beets; that’s my least favorite flavor).
The cooking crew (introducing our new friends Leonie from Ireland but living in New Zealand, center, and Jerica from Seattle, right):
After plenty of wine during class, the class further bonded at a local bar with a 3-liter ball of beer. Good times! At least until the next morning…
