Discover flavors of Colombian cuisine – 03/03/2023 – Tourism

In a small Colombian beach town, a world-famous chef was poetically speaking about a local pasta recipe.

Leonor Espinosa – who had just been selected as the best female chef on the planet in 2022 by the World’s 50 Best, a ranking controlled by a British media giant – said that the sesame paste known locally as “ajonjolí” paste was a of the region’s many recipes that went beyond flavor, and which I would soon find out why.

I went to Rincón del Mar, a three-hour drive from the city of Cartagena, to meet Espinosa in his homeland. It’s worth adding that Espinosa now lives in Bogotá, where her restaurant, Leo, has been garnering raves. But her roots are in the Caribbean region of the country, where she lived most of her childhood.

Now, the head chef returns whenever she can to run labs: workshops sponsored by her foundation, Funleo, that bring together cooks from communities that are often overlooked and lacking in resources, in order to prepare local dishes and catalog and preserve as many traditional ingredients, recipes and techniques as possible.

I wasn’t there to participate (the workshops are only open to invited local cooks), but to ask Espinosa for guidance. After the Colombian chef’s much-heralded ascension to the culinary throne, I realized how little I knew about where she came from: an area of ​​the Caribbean that is well isolated from the busy Cartagena-Barranquilla corridor.

So I contacted the foundation and, after talking to its director, I developed a plan: meet Espinosa during one of the workshops she runs in the region, get information from her about the area, and then take advantage of it to spend a few days there, traveling and eating.

Our conversations provided me with a culinary map, which led me on a journey past seaside grills and a palm-studded islet, to a small town of rustic thatched-roof houses, all scented with coconut, garlic, cassava, cheese and, of course, ginger from the local cuisine.

When I smelled the grilled food and heard Espinosa’s husky voice coming from the beach, I knew I had arrived at his workshop location at Hostal Arrecife in Rincón del Mar just in time.

“Note that the octopus looks complete,” she was saying in Spanish to several onlookers, in a sandy but shaded area that Espinosa has turned into a waterfront demonstration kitchen.

I recognized her voice from watching her on video, even though we hadn’t met in person yet. A moment later, there I was, next to her and the octopus. “If you remove the tentacles,” she continued, “you’ll butcher the octopus.”

Considering the animal was clearly dead, I wondered what exactly I was missing, but the mystery didn’t last. Bowing down to the octopus and preaching deep respect for the ingredients each cook uses, she said: “We have to pay homage to them. We can’t butcher them, taking away their flavor.”

Then, during our first one-on-one conversation, when the group was taking a break, I wasn’t surprised that Espinosa recalled the flavors of his youth with the reverence and rhythm we normally see reserved for mantras. “‘Ají dulce, yuca, ñame,'” she intoned, conjuring up visions of chiles, cassava, and yams. She looked like an almost monastic figure in her white and cream ensemble, which contrasted with the lime green fabric of the hammock she lay in.

I just happened to try some local cassava in a coconut cheesecake – a revealing blend of sweet and savory. But as Espinosa continued on about the most beloved local foods, few others struck me as familiar and most of the names had something magical about them – and none more so than “ajonjolí”.

The name would have been enough to capture me, but there was also the idea of ​​roasted sesame seeds imbued with a rich tropical terroir and ground by hand to make a paste, in keeping with a “culinary tradition that is being lost in cities but can still be felt in rural areas,” said Espinosa.

I was able to take an unexpected test a few hours later at Dos Aguas Lodge, the eco-friendly beach resort where I had reserved a room for my stay and local excursions.

After a mind-blowing double visual program –watching birds at sunset, along the coastline of an island submerged to the point where only the tips of the trees stick out of the water, and then a dip in a bioluminescent lagoon– I went back to the hotel hungry. And on the blackboard in the kitchen, I found the name “ajonjolí”, in the form of a homemade sesame-infused ice cream, accompanied by a Colombian cacao brownie.

While this was clearly not the pure, unadulterated sesame paste I was aiming to discover, it was still a perfect bedtime snack, and an interesting conversation starter with Dania Bianuni, one of the founders of Dos Aguas, whom I had asked about the dish.

She explained that, as relative newcomers to Rincón del Mar, and hoping not to trespass into the territory of the community’s traditional restaurants, the hotel’s cooks often opted for unorthodox preparations of local staples.

The next day, my culinary map sent me to the palm-shaded shores of Isla Tintipán — about 40 minutes offshore — in search of arepas of “huevo,” a fried dough wrapper containing eggs that is practically synonymous with the Caribbean cuisine from Colombia.

I was assured that all the local boat captains knew of a restaurant called Rocio, even those who still called the place after the owner’s ancestors, as the house had been in the family for generations on the nearby islet of Santa Cruz del Islote. .

Though Tintipán was beautiful enough to divert my attention from almost any other subject — with sparkling blue waters sweeping the white beach sands and lush, navigable mangroves — I remained steadfast in my quest for a “huevo” arepa. Freshly fried, spongy to perfection and very thick, my arepas were a clear challenge to the modesty of their presentation (the waiter who served me described the product as “su arepita”).

I seasoned the treat with a pinch of sea salt and a little “suero” (a whey-based condiment similar to labneh, but less dense and with a less pronounced flavor), and then I ate it as if no one was watching, because nobody was. There were far more interesting things to see on the beach, where crowds of Colombian visitors danced to mismatched beats emanating from rival loudspeakers.

I finished off the meal with a coconut caramel, a small-portion dessert that is satisfyingly rich and chewy but not too sweet, and returned to the mainland, where I immediately wanted to book a spot in the “arepas” class that Dos Aguas offers at the home of a local expert. But the open road was calling me, or at least my driver, who called to confirm I wanted an early pick-up the next morning.

We zigzag through the savannahs of the Caribbean region, and about three hours southeast of Rincón del Mar we arrive in San Luis de Sincé, a small town with at least four great loves: Espinosa, whose family comes from there; writer Gabriel García Márquez, who lived there for part of his childhood; clarinetist and composer Juan Madera Castro, who was born there; and “ajonjolí” – although not necessarily in that order.

Espinosa’s family home still occupies a prominent place in the city’s central square, as does a childhood home for García Márquez, whose fans sometimes claim that San Luis de Sincé inspired the fictional city of Macondo, in the novel “One Hundred Years of Loneliness”.

Sincé’s Casa de la Cultura has a fascinating installation about the author, as well as Madera, whose most famous composition, “La Pollera Colorá,” is basically Colombia’s unofficial national anthem. But as much as immersing myself in local folklore fascinated me, I needed to eat something.

Espinosa had instructed me to look for “ajonjolí” in private homes, an experience that reminded me of buying “chicha,” a fermented corn drink produced in the Peruvian Andes, in houses identified by small flags. But in Sincé, the big, shiny “ajonjolí aqui!” scattered along the roadside made my search even easier.

The thatched-roof house I chose had walls painted parakeet green, inside and out. Maybe I was under the influence of García Márquez, but the vibes of magical realism were hard to ignore—especially when I remembered something I’d heard about “ajonjolí” sellers: only those blessed with a good hand were capable of prepare the sesame paste.

The woman at the door assured me that she descended from a long line of people with good hands, and the moment I tasted a sample, served in a repurposed instant coffee glass, I immediately believed she was telling the truth.

Luckily, I had time to digest on the way to Galeras – a tree-lined town known for cattle ranching, about 25km southwest, a 45-minute drive on muddy savannah roads. The next stop on the map was the Donde Mingo restaurant, where they told me I couldn’t not order the “mote” of the house, a yam and cheese soup that alone would be worth the trip.

Using a cream of various Caribbean yams as a base, chef Domingo Mingo Ramos adds abundant cheese, “suero”, local vegetables and a garlic and onion stir-fry.

I stopped to catch my breath halfway through my terrine and, hoping to save room for some more soup, walked to one end of the dining room, a wallless, thatched area where a traditional flutist, three percussionists and a wild man playing maracones (imagine extra-large maracas) were making the entire lunch crowd sing and dance.

I danced until I felt I had cleared enough space to continue with the next dishes: eggplant in garlic, coconut rice and herbal brandy.

Sadly, there was no room left for dessert, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that I’d be back for the city’s simultaneous January festivals: one to celebrate carob beans and all things related to them, and the other, the Cuadros Vivos – or living paintings –, in which the locals, dressed up, made up and made up, become the outdoor art installations.

As I contemplated my bottle of “ajonjolí” and the other Sincé sweets that my driver and I would enjoy until the end of the trip, my thoughts returned to that first encounter with Espinosa in Rincón del Mar: You have to respect the ingredients, she said.

My short stay in the place that nurtured the chef’s famous cuisine was full of flavors, but, to fully respect all those ingredients, I realized that I would have to return with much more time.