Fanesca

After responding to the question "How is Easter celebrated in Ecuador" about 30 times, I decided it was urgent to upload some pictures and tell the story of fanesca.  Although there is much more to the Easter celebration (parades, vigils, and probably other things I don't know about), fanesca is one thing that is uniquely Ecuadorian and, honestly, it fascinates me.

For anyone who doesn't like reading much, the short explanation of fanesca is "a soup made of lots of legumes and fish and served during lent, especially on Good Friday."  And here is the picture:

For those who want the whole story, here it goes, with help from random Ecuadorian friends, wikipedia, and a Spanish website (which actually tells more versions of the story and includes a recipe)...

The origin of Fanesca goes back beyond the arrival of the Spanish and the introduction of Christianity to South America.  Indigenous people used to make fanesca (called uchucuta in the native tongue) to celebrate the the spring equinox, but with the advent of Christianity, Ecuadorians switch the "special significance" of the soup to more religious themes.  Although there are innumerable variations on the soup, the typical recipe leads to a green squash zapallo and milk broth in which 12 types of hulled legumes and  fish are cooked.  Depending on who you talk to, the 12 grains either represent the 12 tribes of Israel or the 12 apostles, whose testimony nourishes the world.  And as you might have already guessed, the fish represents Jesus.  Some of the grains/legumes are given special significance.  For example, chochos (firm white beans) are bitter and normally have to be washed for about a week before eaten.  Thus they represent the bitter betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot.

The chochos used for our Good Friday fanesca

My Ecuadorian fanesca experience began with a bus ride out to Valencia near Pintag, a farming community outside of Quito.  A family had invited me and my coworker, Edwin, to join them in making fanesca, which is a family event comparable to Thanksgiving because a) the whole family gets involved and b) everyone is STUFFED after the meal.  People joke that you don't need to eat for three days after a bowl of fanesca soup.

We actually arrived after most of the work was finished, but I learned how to take corn off the cob with my fingers instead of a knife, and then took pictures of all the ingredients, to the amusement of my hosts.  They also allowed me to pose by the pot of boiling soup to pretend that I knew how to cook fanesca.

Cleaning up after the legume-hulling party with a bucket of potatoes for the fanesca in the foreground.

The leftovers from the real work of hulling, completed before my arrival

Edwin and I help take corn kernels off the cob

I'm stirring the soup over a wood stove (and actually standing right next to some guinea pigs!)

More ingredients: fava beans and the corn I helped to de-cob

peanuts in a bag next to a pot of liquefied garlic and green onion (which is called white onion here!)

Lentils

Peas...and that concludes the legumes.  Maybe there were only 6 apostles!?

Fish...fresh trout from a nearby river! Yum!

Around 1:30pm, everything was ready, and we sat in a large circle around a tiny table to enjoy the soup.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the aji, aka hot sauce.  That bowl on the left was completely devoured in about 20 minutes!

As is typical in an Ecuadorian lunch, the soup is just the appetizer before the segundo(second plate)/seco(dry, in contrast to "wet" soup)/arroz(rice, referring to the fact that the entree comes with rice about 95% of the time).  I suppose arroz wouldn't be the correct word this time around, because the segundo was molo, described in English as mashed potatoes with hard-boiled egg and avacado on a bed of lettuce.

Last but not least comes a dessert of either arroz con leche (rice with milk) or higos con queso (figs with cheese).  The first is more appealing to most gringos, but I beg to differ because the higos are boiled to perfection in honey, cinnamon, and cloves!  This picture actually comes from an experience on the Santo Domingo medical brigade I helped out with--no one else near me wanted higos, so they all offered theirs to me.  Don't worry, I didn't finish them all.

They gave me arroz con leche in a cup that reads, "I [heart] my Mom." So True!

Surrounded by 4 servings of higos con queso

One of 2 servings I actually finished.

Well, now you have the whole story, and I'll add to the previous list of upcoming blogs a post about waterfalls.  Let's just say that waiting 3 days to eat after fanesca was impossible after the nature hike the next day.