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A: In the south of Chile there was a thing called roscas, which are kind of like somebody rolled out a tube of dough, and folded it around so it was a circle, and then fried it.
V: Do they puff up?
A: A little bit. They maybe have a little bit bigger hole than a normal donut. Yeah – our favorite place we found them was at a supermarket. But the were also sold outside of bus stations -- people would be selling them out of a big cooler, there would have some hot towels in there.
V: You mean to keep them warm?
A: Yeah. They’d have a cooler that covered the towels. The roscas were dusted with powdered sugar. And they could be good. Sometimes they weren’t that good. But you never know until you try it, so we just tried it anyway.
V: You’ve talked a lot about fried donut-like things. Are there other fried doughy things around that aren’t toroidal?
A: Well, there’s a lot of empanadas. They’re stuffed. Some of them are fried and some of them are baked. I have to say, the baked ones are better, because there’s so much fried food that whenever you can get something that’s not fried you’re happy.
And then in Bolivia, there was something that was really nice that was served for breakfast, called a buñelo. It's a big fried dough thing, kind of like a apple fritter, but not as sweet. It was served with maybe either powdered sugar or that sugar cane syrup.
The big fried dough thing was served for breakfast, with this hot corn beverage capped api. There were two different colors of api they would prepare, in different pots. One would be made from dark purple corn, and one would be made from white corn. The pruple one would be like cinnamon and other spices in there.... I think they were both made with orange peel, so they were kind of citrusy, and then they had sugar in them of course, because all beverages in South America are really sweet. So, it would be this citrusy, spicy, really thick corn beverage – it was super awesome. And you would order it mesglado, which means ‘mixed’, so they’d pour in one scoop of one, and one scoop of the other, and it would make this really nice design in your glass. It was really cool. You’d get that, and a buñelo. That’s pretty much all it was.
V: So did you ever try to make donuts at some point?
A: ummm …. We made pancakes a lot.
V: Pancakes?! That’s a whole other story!
A: Yeah – it’s a whole other thing. It’s a whole other adventure! Plus it was kind of a missionary trip.
V: Wait, so were you able to find pancakes too?
A: They called them ‘pan-ke-kes’ [Vince laughs]. In Ecuador, I’d would say they’re fairly American-style, when you can find them. They’re pretty much like you’d find here. In Peru, they would calla buñelo a pankeke. Pretty much. It was almost exactly the same thing. In both places, a lot of times they would be offered without any sweet thing to put on them, which never seemed quite complete.
I guess Ecuador is where you’d find pancakes, and they’d be fairly like what you’d expect. They’d put some tropical fruit on them maybe.
V: Was Ecuador more “western-friendly” [tourist-wise]?
A: Well, I don’t know…. I think they were a little more friendly. I think the tourist industry is prevalent there, but it’s not quite as aggressive as it is in Peru. And Peru is just crazy – oddly not so much in the north, but in the south….
Anyway. As far as pancakes go, if you go down to Peru, they’re kind of like the buñelos in Bolivia, but not as good. In Bolilvia there wasn’t anything really like a pancake. Although actually, once in Peru I ordered a platano, like a banana tortilla. It turns out that “tortilla” down there is much more loosely translated, so it was like a banana pancake. It was served for dinner, with rice, and some little savory dish on the side. So that was surprising. That was at one of the “vegetarian” restaurants that had a lot of chicken on the menu! In Chile sometimes you’d see pankeke, but it was more like a crepe. There were all like crepes. They’d put some dulce de leche in there, and some coconut in there or something.
V: So who did you make pancakes for, then?
A: I made them a lot in Argentina, when we worked on the farm.
V: And what did people think of them?
A: Well everyone was like, “Wow, they’re so thick!” Because they were just like used to crepes. Because there were all these ridiculous French people that had been to the farm before, and I don’t know, they kind of talk about pancakes like they know what they are, and they really don’t.
V: Wow, it seems you were really offended by their pancake sensibilities.
A: Also, people from New Zealand had that interpretation too, like, “Wow, these are so thick!” They had a different word for them, too, they said “These are more like .. blah-blah-blah”, I can’t remember the word they used. It was something really hard to remember.
V: Like “johnnycakes” or something? “Flapjacks”?
A: Nothing like that. Probably their own version.
V: It was probably something like “williwongamuttys”.
A: Yeah, or “bulamagons”
V: Or “kikahumahungas”. You know those New Zealanders. They have a weird word for everything.
A: I know, they do. Anyway, I made pancakes at the farm a couple time, on Sundays, that was our day off. And after a while, it kind of became a tradition. One time we substituted making empanadas, which was a very fun experience and came off well. It was just fun. I always made a lot of coffee…
V: Wait, the family that ran the farm weren’t big coffee drinkers?
A: Because of the liquid thing. [They didn’t believe in liquids. They were on a no-liquid diet, for health reasons, and got all of their water through fruits and vegetables.] A lot of volunteers like coffee, but just didn’t have the determination to make a filtration device, and go to the store and buy coffee. Beucase when we were on the farm, we had to walk to the town, which was maybe 20-25 minutes away, to get stuff. But it was always – the only time you could go was during the siesta, and everybody was usually tired, and you wouldn’t want to walk in the hot sun, you know, a mile and a half each way, just to buy a bag of coffee.
V: But you did.
A: I did. YEAH. And sometime you could take turns. One person would go and buy stuff for a bunch of people. And then the next time, you would go, and the next time someone else would go. And if you went a little bit father, there was this woman who maybe lived 40 minutes away, by foot, who sold fresh milk. I paid her several visits while we were down at the farm. It was pretty fun to experiment with fresh milk. But you know, once it starts to turn, it’s really good in pancakes.
V: I think it’s funny that there were certain things you couldn’t live without, and they’re all breakfast-related: donuts, pancakes, milk and coffee. Why do you think that is?
A: I did really tone it down a lot on the trip – I had to. But it was nice to have them every once in a while. Plus, on the farm, it was interesting to see what things people just had to have, and talk about it. It was a really fun cultural exchange.
V: Like did the French people just need to start miming?
A: Yeah – and all the Aussies had to carry around their didgeridoos.
V: I'll bet they just had to have their Fosters and Vegemite.
A: Their parties were a lot less popular.
V: I’ll bet tea was a big thing. Was anybody jonesing for tea?
A: Some of them drank tea. A lot of them drank matte, actually. We got into matte too. In fact, we can have some today.
V: Where?
A: At my house. I have a gourd, and a le bombilla, the little straw thing…
V: Will it screw me up though? Can I drive?
A: Uh.. yeah.
V: What is it?
A: It’s got a stimulant in it, sort of. It’s like a caffeine relative. It’s like the cousin to caffeine. It’s kind of like if you drank tea. It’s not quite like coffee. People drink it all the time down there.
V: Well, they even have matte at Starbucks and stuff, right?
A: Yeah, but that’s really not the same. Starbucks probably makes a matte chai or something.
V; Whereas this is just pure, unadulterated matte?
A: It’s the dried yerba, and you fill it up in the gourd, and then keep on adding hot water, and passing the gourd around.
V: Is it “Yerba Buena”?
A: No, that’s mint.
V: What about “Yerba Mala”?
A: Those are weeds. ....So anyway, people have matte for breakfast.
V: I remember [our friend] Stefan coming back from South America, and he had matte all the time.
A: Actually Rachel was really into making it.
V: Did it do things for her?
A: She just liked it. Part of it is just the ritual thing, you know. It’s like this -- you’re in a room with a bunch of people. You have a thermos, or something like that, and somebody just keeps filling it. Put a little bit of hot water in it, pass it to one person, and they just kind of suck it down. Because it doesn’t actually hold that much. It’s enough for one person, and they drink, and then they give it back to the person with the thermos, and they put a little more water in it. And then the next person gets it, and it keeps going around the room.
V: Did she just like the communal aspect of it?
A: I don’t know – she just liked it, a new experience with a caffeinated beverage. It was an entirely new procedure – different neighborhood.
V: I’ll have to try it. I never really did when I lived with Stefan. I think he showed me it one time, and I was doing something, and said, “ Oh, I’ll try some later,” but never did.
A: I think I even have some stuff that he gave me. But it's matte with some other stuff in it, and it’s very strange-tasting. It’s not just the matte. It’s got some weird stuff in it.
So, on the farm we made pancakes, on Sundays, and even after we left, they still made pancakes.
V: You had a cultural transmission.
A: Yeah that was pretty fun.
V: Did you lay on some of your trademark ingredients, like Guiness? Quinoa?
A: I think maybe I made some of them with beer. The grains we had available – it usually didn’t get too crazy, but we had polenta and whole wheat flour, a lot of flax seed, maybe some flax flour actually. We used stuff that they had on the farm. … I put corn in some I think. I think I even put onion in some – like caramelized onions, which I have a hankering to try again. Apples… I tried to use a lot of just what they had, I was at this farm with all this stuff. Plus, you couldn’t really use the ingredients you wanted -- a lot of ingredients they didn’t really have. You’d have to go to a town that was on hour and a half away, and we just couldn’t go there.
V: Were other people as gung ho as you about food?
A: Not so much. Although when we were going to make empanadas, we had a couple other guys who -- well it was Rachel, myself, and this other guy Carlos, who was a native Argentinian, who was a really cool guy, although he talked our ear off sometimes. He was another volunteer. At the farm, they had had bad experiences from other Argentines that wanted to work there. They said generally the people who come from overseas know that we’re going to work hard and want to learn stuff, whereas a lot of the people from Argentina think it’s like Spring Break: “Oh, I’ll stay here because I wont have to spend any money.” But anyway, it was really nice, because there were two really good exceptions to that rule when we were there. One was this young kid who was like 21. We actually got along with him really well, and when he went back to school in Buenos Aires, we went there and he let us stay there. We hung out with him and his mom a lot, it was really fun. And this other guy, Carlos. He as at the farm maybe 5 of 6 six weeks that we were. A lot of nights at the fire with some wine, just kind of hanging around. It was good times. We’d always make fires with toilet paper -- this was because you’d have to put your toilet paper in the trash … I don’t think they had any kind of septic system. So the toilet paper would always go in a big wooden trash can. So whenever we would have a fire, that would be the first layer. And then, we’d put sticks on top of that. It burned really well. It was nice to cook the pancakes outside.
V: On the shit fire?
A: Well, actually, to cook the pancakes a lot of the time , the best way to do it was this: They had a couple crappy frying pans, that really didn’t cut it [in the kitchen] so well. But they had this thing, that I think the dad in the family actually made, that was made of metal and somewhat portable. You make a fire in it – it’s on legs, and it’s got this surface where you put whatever it is that you’re cooking, like a big pot, for instance. He must have found some parts and put them all together -- it had some spots for air holes in the sides, and this little door to stick the wood in. It was pretty cool. So we used that, and one of the big metal trays from the outside brick oven they had. We put that on top, and just cooked on the grill part. And that was good. But it was an added complexity, keeping it stoked with wood. I wan’t used to concentrating on so many things.
V: You’d look up [from pouring pancakes], and realize: “Oh no! I’ve been making rectangles!”
A: Fortunately, that didn’t end up happening.
V: After the farm, where did you go?
A: After that, we ended up going to Colombia. That have a good version of a donut in Colombia, actually, called roscone, very similar to the roscas. It’s kind of the same style as the ones in Chile, except that it’s filled with dulce de leche. There they called it arequite (sp?), but it was the same thing. Visiting little bakeries in Colombia was a pretty good way to do some tasting of donut-like items.
V: But other countries didn’t have little pastry places like that?
A: Well, they didn’t have anything that anything that was like donuts. There was some other good specialties though for sweet stuff. But in general I would say there were so many of them that were based more on appearance than on taste -- pretty much across the board, if you went into a pasteria, and you saw a lot of simple looking things, they are probably really good. And if you saw something that was all crazy, and different colors, and like 5, 6 layers, it usually tasted like a bunch a sugary gook.
V: You want to go have some Yerba Matte?
A: Yeah, let’s do it.
THE END.
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