I’m way behind on my posts since I have been waiting to have the time to implement this new “Read More” feature (Expandable Post with Peekaboo View). I have been leery of poking about in the inner workings of my blog, but I noticed and liked this feature on Meeta’s Blog (www.whatsforlunchhoney.blogspot.com) and when I asked her how to do it, she referred me (thanks a million, Meeta) to www.hackosphere.blogspot.com. I’ve been working up my courage, and have taken some time to do this change with “thought”. If it works properly, it should be followed by a flurry of posts that have been waiting in the wings for some time.

Today’s dish is Fiambre … a dish that is famous in Guatemala as the food to serve on November 1st, the Day of the Dead, when all and sundry pack up their gardening tools and paintbrushes, their new plastic flowers, their guitars and their kids and head off to the cemetaries to repair the past year’s ravages and party a bit with the departed. I’m guessing that the vivid red color of fiambre …

has something to do with its timing on this day, but have found no mention of that anywhere.

Fiambre is a salad, served chilled, and may be made up from over 50 ingredients.

Fiambre started out from the tradition in Guatemala of taking dead family members their favorite dishes to the cemeteries for the Day of the Dead. As all different families brought food to the celebrations, they became mixed, eventually mixing them together to this all-encompassing salad. Ingredients usually include numerous cold cuts and sausages, pickled baby-corn and onion, beets, pacaya flower, string beans, radish, different cheeses, olives, chicken, and sometimes even brussels sprouts or shrimp … topped with an herbed oil and vinegar dressing. It can take days to make, and like all good traditional dishes, Fiambre varies from kitchen to kitchen. This version was a gift from our next door neighbors, who make a huge delicious batch every year for their own family celebrations.

I completely forgot about Thanksgiving this year. Fortunately, where food is concerned, I have some kind of “inner guidance system”. I awoke on Thanksgiving morning with a craving for stuffing. The craving was so strong that I started making up a batch while cooking our breakfast, stuffed a whole chicken, that I just happened to have picked up at the market the day before, and popped it in a slow oven to roast. It wasn’t until much later in the day that I received a “Happy Turkey Day” message from my brother and realized that the cravings were coming through from my Canadian genetic coding!

I haven’t made a potato salad for years, and I’m not sure why, since the ingredients are all readily available here. When I decided to serve hamburgers the other day, it seemed like a natural accompaniment. The only alteration I made from the usual potato salad recipe was to use a mixture of mayonaise with my home made yogurt and some chopped cilantro as dressing.

Satays are the other popular barbecue food in the e-zines, and I’ve just been waiting the right moment to try out a couple of recipes that I came across for the Satay Marinade and the Peanut Dipping Sauce. I made it all up yesterday, and left the chicken strips marinating for the night, then, when Bryan and his friend (they’ve recently arrived from Canada) came in this morning, we just hunted up some firewood and started up the barbecue. I served it with baked potatoes and steamed broccoli with chive sauce. The Peanut Dipping Sauce turned out quite spicy hot … I thought at first that it would be too hot to eat, but all agreed that it was in the “addictive” range of heat.

This is the lunch that was served by the Women’s Group for the construction workers who were pouring cement for the floor in their new building (see www.ixcanaan.blogspot.com for more on this). This type of lunch is, without question, the most popular lunch amongst the people who live in this area. It is made up of fried chicken, rice, a potato-vegetable salad (or, often, a cabbage salad) and tortillas. It is usually eaten by ripping chunks of chicken from the bone to wrap in the tortilla and eat with the rice and vegetables.

It seems like every recipe-zine that I have received over the last couple of weeks is raving about “barbecue” and “rubs” so it was only a matter of time before I would have to experiment. Although I could (and have) done some grilling over a rack and 3 rocks, I decided to splurge and buy a real barbecue. There are several interesting designs in the market, and I eventually settled on this popular model made from a tire rim. The recipe for Moorish Pork Kabobs, had caught my eye, but there was not a single shoulder roast to be found in the market, so going with the flow, I picked up some juicy looking baby back ribs and later that same afternoon found a recipe for a rub and a sauce called Sticky Spicy Ribs. It was a lengthy process to produce a finished product, what with mixing, marinating, baking and barbecuing. I started first thing in the morning and they were finally ready to eat for dinner with, what else, baked potatoes!! The meat was a bit chewy, but the flavor was so great that it didn’t matter!!

I have been thinking for awhile that an good recipe for Eggplant Parmigiano would make an excellent vegetarian addition to the Gringo Perdido menu, so I read through several recipes and chose two to try. This was the first one. The eggplant was dredged in crumbs before being fried, then lathered with this excellent tomato/carrot sauce, and topped with grated mozzarella. They were good, but I want to try the other recipe, which is a bit different, before making a decision.

I have tried to make donuts since I have lived here. I had phoned Mom for her recipe and any tips she could give me, since I’ve never perfected the art of deep fat frying, all to no avail … after hours of preparation, they didn’t become real donuts at all! So, when I came across this recipe for Donut Muffins the other day, I was anxious to give it a try and see if they actually tasted like donuts. They were delicious … if not quite exactly like a real donut. They have a dry cake-like consistency with a crunchy cinamon-sugar coating and they taste great with coffee or chocolate.

Since I bought 2 pounds of ground beef for the lasagna, and only used one, I decided to continue my walk down memory lane with a good old fashioned meat loaf. I loosely followed a couple of recipes that included lots of grated carrots and other vegies, as well as oatmeal (instead of bread or crackers). I gave it a bit of a Guatemalan twist with some chopped cilantro, which is my “herb of the month”! And topped it with some crushed potato chips. It was moist and flavorful and was perfectly accompanied by the traditional baked potato, and some not-so-traditional guisquil with a yogurt/chive sauce.

For a variety of reasons, we seldom eat beef. However, I recently discovered that the Despensa (the local supermarket) is bringing in a quality beef product, so I occasionally splurge and cook a dish from the past. I haven’t made a lasagna in more than 15 years … and never here in Peten. I had already done a thorough recipe search, and had cobbled together about 4 different ones to get the tastiest bolognese, the tangiest ricotta filling, the ultimate bechamel topping and the ideal noodle. I used culinary licence to substitute several of the ingredients … most notably the ricotta cheese for yogurt, which added the most delicious “back note”, and will become a permanent change in the recipe. The noodles were the best lasagna noodles I ever ate. I only used half of the batch of noodles, so I froze the other half and will use them to try the dish with chicken the next time.