As far as great, high-quality ingredients and specialty products -- Israeli cous cous, spelt flour, brown Basmati rice, spirulina, flax seed, etc. -- we're covered. Don't even get me started on the coffee: some of the best coffee in the world is grown here, and I have gleefully enjoyed tasting all sorts of different brands and types.
When it comes to fresh, organic produce, I am positively basking in possibilities. Each week I get an email from my favorite farmers, I send off my order and when I show up at the Tuesday morning market, there is a bag of goodies waiting for me in their truck.
In the couple months since I've been here, I have slowly but surely built up a friendship with Curt and Candice, owners of Palmira Produce, originally from Northern California and now farmers and -- wait for it -- sauce makers for the lucky inhabitants of Boquete, "land of eternal spring."
Although I had seen Candice's list of sauces every week, I mostly just stuck to the produce, with the occasional foray into the amazing things she had to offer. Her homemade Sriracha sauce is BETTER than the original. Her homemade dill pickles are DELICIOUS, and her peanut sauce is creamy and spicy and downright amazing.
In four months of being here, though, that's very little compared to the list she has, organized by continent, and made mostly with ingredients from her garden.
So when she walked me to the cooler in the back of her truck a couple weeks ago and started pulling out sauces, what could I do but say yes to trying some? Well, it was less of a "yes" and more of a "HELL YEAH!"
First of all: Banana ketchup. Wha??
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| Pan fried noodles & vegetables with banana ketchup |
Caribbean Banana Ketchup: This is really fun to use. It really does not taste much like bananas. Those who have sampled it have mentioned flavors like A-1 Pic a Pepper Sauce or Worcestershire with a slight sweetness (no added sugar) to balance out the flavors and texture like ketchup.
You heard right. Banana. Ketchup. The consistency of ketchup, with the same vinegar bite, but with a much less acidic consistency (regular ketchup often feels like it's burning my tongue). It pours like ketchup and is surprisingly less sweet.
I wanted to put it on everything, so I did. I used it as a sauce for my pan fried chow mein and stir-fried veggies, and it went especially well with the purple cabbage I included, even MORE especially because I cooked it in coconut oil. Since the banana ketchup is less sweet than regular ketchup (in my opinion), the coconut oil's touch of dulce was perfect.
And because my favorite combination is sweet and spicy, I also added some of her Sriracha to the mix. :)
Aside from my concoction, it would be a great accompaniment to sweet potato fries, patacones (the local fried green bananas) and I bet it would be REALLY good on a Hawaiian chicken burger with a slice of pineapple. Ooo, and you know what else it would be good on, even if it's already perfect the way it is? Caribbean Pork Tenderloin.
"I have Harissa," Candice said, her head in the cooler.
Radio silence.
"Do you know what Harissa is?" she asked.
I had to admit that I didn't.
Candice's sauce description:
Moroccan Harissa: A sauce / paste made from Dried Red Chiles, Roasted Sweet Red Peppers with lots of garlic and various spices, such as caraway, mint and cumin.
Oh thank the gods that I still get to learn new things about food! The Harissa was delicious: almost smoky in flavor, it would make a great better-than-barbecue-sauce topping for a burger, a broiled pork chop, or grilled chicken. I found a recipe online for a Harissa Bloody Mary, with balsamic vinegar. (Note to self: buy some vodka)
It had just enough kick to make me happy, and enough depth of flavor to make me swoon.
I made a phad-thai type dish, with rice noodles, all the vegetables I had on hand -- carrots, cabbage, onions, kale, etc. -- scrambled egg and harissa as the sauce.
When it came right down to it, though, it was missing something: sweetness. Call me a one-trick pony, but I like my food to have the whole wheel of flavors: spice as in depth, spice as in hot, and sweet to play a little bit on the tongue. So...I added papaya.
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| Harissa Phad Thai with Papaya |
It wasn't bad, but it could have been better. Papaya was what I had on hand, but the real answer that I was looking for is my favorite sweet ingredient that I put in pretty much any dish with savory vegetables: golden raisins. If I had had any, this new concoction of harissa phad thai would have been PERFECT. All thanks to a native Californian with a penchant for sauces that decided her paradise was the same place as mine.
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