Tico food - simple but delicious

Having been in Costa Rica nearly two months, I've had plenty of time to sample some local dishes, along with our excellent food cooked on camp.
The national dish of Costa Rica is pinto, which is, in its simplest form, rice and beans. The details of the dish vary, depending on the cook. For example, I had a plate of pinto in a little soda in town (a soda is a small local cafe), which was fairly simple in flavouring, but shamefully my favourite pinto is that cooked on camp! This version is made really great by good flavouring of the black beans, with vinegar, soy sauce, and most importantly, Lizano! Lizano is a strange vegetable-flavoured condiment which makes beans epic. Pinto is often served with egg or plantain. Patacones are the best things to make with plantain when it's green and therefore savoury. Plantain is fried, mashed down and refried.
Plantain can also be served up in other dishes - I've also had it in curry. When it turns yellow and goes sweeter, it's good just fried and when it's really past it it tastes like a banana!

We used yellow plantain to make an awesome ginger/banana bread the other day. Despite the fact we only have two hobs and no oven, there's been a fair amount of baking around camp recently. We've created an oven-like device, by putting cake mix in a mess tin and sealing with tin foil, then putting this in a covered pan of boiling water. Best of all the cakes have been coming out really moist. Elle has become camp baker and cooked us many yummy treats in the past couple of weeks, including coconut and peanut butter cake (above) and brownies with chocolate and caramel sauces.

Another more unusual ingredient we get a lot of here is yucca. Yucca has the texture of a dense potato, and tastes  bit potato-y as well. Again I've eaten it in sauces to go with rice etc, and also just by itself, cut into chunks as a side. Aparrently it's also good to make chips out of, so I'll be giving that a go soon!

The rest of our food on camp is good and surprisingly varied. There is always excitement on wrap day (usually the day we get resupply) as a good tomatoey tortilla is  win in the jungle! We usually have this with canned refried beans, which have been spiced and made into a delicious paste (also good in sauces!). Guacamole also usually makes an appearance. I sometimes make guacamole at home, but the Costa Ricans have their own twist on it. It doesn't involve any tomato here, but they do mash hard boiled egg into it, which is a tasty addition! We also use cilantro in it, which is a wid corriander which grows on and near camp.

We often do like a bit of a forage for our food. There's a couple of guava trees on camp that we have picked fruit from in the past, as well as a few wild herbs. During our week at Cerro Osa, Juan got some of the BEST oranges I've ever tasted off of a tree for us. They were almost lemony with really pale skin and flesh. Since being here, I don't know if I can ever bring myself to pay for a coconut again... they are EVERYWHERE! If we want one we just walk down the road and pick up a couple! The most incredible thing though, is the skills of the locals to de-husk and open them with a machette, they do it so delicately for such a scary, cumbersome-looking tool! One of my best moments was sitting on the beach, drinking from a freshley fallen and opened coconut - it was incredible!

Nevertheless, 80% of our conversations revolve around food, completely unintentionally of course! We talk about what we miss, which for most people is meat and cheese as we don't have a fridge. We have occaisonally had tico cheese however, as the bar down the road (actually it's about an hours walk away but it's the same difference in the jungle!), makes and sells it. The cheese is very pale, with a mozzarella-like consistency and it's best fried. It's quite a strong flavour, like farmhouse cheese back in the UK. Personally, I've missed cheese a little but not really misse meat much, I guess as our camp food is so good anyway! Although chocolatey treats are always welcome!