A pupusa, served as usual with a kimchee garnish
El Salvadorean Tortillas
Mother and daughter pupusa team at workThe pupusa, El Salvador's contribution to the culinary world is simple, but hard to describe. It's simply a stuffed tortilla, usually filled with beans and cheese. The tortillas in El Salvador are small (4" diameter) and thick (1/3") to begin with, and are usually cooked on a hot griddle, having been hand-moulded from a batch of freshly ground corn meal. The thickness of the tortillas and their method of cooking makes the result taste more like a grilled cheese sandwich than anything -- though with the delicious taste of fresh corn. Or sometimes rice, since they also often make tortillas from rice flour here, strangely enough.
Pupusas are always served with a pickled cabbage salad, dressed in a tomato sauce. Pickled cabbage with tomato is more commonly known as kimchee, though not in El Salvador.
An important part of the role of a Peace Corps volunteer is living as the locals do. I was thinking that I suppose I could learn to live without the Air Conditioning, and am secretly a little jealous of the absence of the Internet -- but I can see the food might be a major issue. El Salvadoreans, like most people in this world, eat nothing but food -- and what they define as food is quite straightforward: soup, rice, beans, meat, and pupusa. Anything else would not really identify as edible. It's odd to think that a generation ago in the United States, most Americans would have taken a similar view -- our generation is the first to actually see the possible varieties of cuisine as a form of expression and enjoyment more than simply sustenance.
The pupusas are good -- gooey without being greasy and piping hot with just the right mix of filling to dough. They come high on the list of "foods made from meat or cheese wrapped in bread of some sort", which Vivian and I are compiling. The pupusa variety with the rice flour wrapper is an interesting and successful variation on this theme.
Over the past 4 days I've probably eaten 20 pupusas. And while I look forward to searching out an El Salvadorean restaurant back in the US one day, I'm glad that in the intervening months I will have something else to eat.
Pupusas are always served with a pickled cabbage salad, dressed in a tomato sauce. Pickled cabbage with tomato is more commonly known as kimchee, though not in El Salvador.
An important part of the role of a Peace Corps volunteer is living as the locals do. I was thinking that I suppose I could learn to live without the Air Conditioning, and am secretly a little jealous of the absence of the Internet -- but I can see the food might be a major issue. El Salvadoreans, like most people in this world, eat nothing but food -- and what they define as food is quite straightforward: soup, rice, beans, meat, and pupusa. Anything else would not really identify as edible. It's odd to think that a generation ago in the United States, most Americans would have taken a similar view -- our generation is the first to actually see the possible varieties of cuisine as a form of expression and enjoyment more than simply sustenance.
The pupusas are good -- gooey without being greasy and piping hot with just the right mix of filling to dough. They come high on the list of "foods made from meat or cheese wrapped in bread of some sort", which Vivian and I are compiling. The pupusa variety with the rice flour wrapper is an interesting and successful variation on this theme.
Over the past 4 days I've probably eaten 20 pupusas. And while I look forward to searching out an El Salvadorean restaurant back in the US one day, I'm glad that in the intervening months I will have something else to eat.
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