Pascua

Have you ever sat at a lunch table with a group of friends and just wondered what it would be like to put all of your lunches together in a big pot, cook for four hours, and serve?

Right me neither.....

But, that´s exactly what Ecuadorian people do every Easter. Damas y Caballeros I give you...

Fanesca.

I first heard about this peculiar substance about two weeks before Easter. Having garnered a reputation as a ¨bottomless pit¨of sorts due to my incredible ability to put away mass amounts of food, people started talking about the one dish I might not be able to have three helpings of. I was immediately intrigued and asked people what was inside this mysterious Easter dish. Remember that scene in Forrest Gump where Bubba takes like three hours to describe what goes into making shrimp? The second place winner for longest food description goes to La Fanesca. After asking my innocent question I was instantly treated to a vocabulary quiz of every single Ecuadorian ¨grano¨ known to mankind.

Here the basic scoop on Fanesca:

Ingredients: corn, peas, every bean ever invented, milk, hard boiled egg, lettuce, six different kinds of fish (no meat on Easter), and ¨los adornos.¨ I won´t waste your time writing down every bean and every adorno because you would be bored and I would definitely contract carpal tunnel syndrome. It´s intense.

Cooking Directions: Another cool facet about Fanesca. Basically nobody knows the recipe because you cannot find it in a cookbook and it´s actually something that has been passed down through the generations. All I know is that you put a ton of milk into a HUGE pot, add all the ingredients, grab a bowl, put some lettuce in the bottom of the bowl, slop on some fanesca, add all of the toppings and eat. Cooking time is somewhere in the neigborhood of four to five hours. With prep time you are looking at a six to seven hour cooking experience minimum.

Taste: D-LISH. Not even kidding. It tastes kind of like a vegetarian curry with fried dough balls on top. However, it´s one of those dishes where you take one bite and you feel like you have eaten about six pounds of steak. It´s awesome. Fanesca packs the most pure ¨I am going to fill you up NOW¨punch in all of history. Imagine grinding up ten half pound hamburgers and then putting them into a small bowl of soup. Thus you are dominating a quarterpounder with every bite. AWESOME.

History: Coolest part of Fanesca. No one knows the recipe and no one knows where it came from. The only thing I have garnered is that Fanesca comes from Juana Esca, the first chick to ever make it. It started off as a sort of Indigenous people garbage-can pot luck dinner. Everyone would come from all parts of the countryside with the grain that they grew on their farm. Everyone would arrive, throw their ingredient into a gigantic garbage can like pot, drink beer all day, and then eat dinner out of the garbage can. Now however, people guard their Fanesca recipes like treasured heirlooms. The hubaloo around Fanesca kind of reminds me of American Chilli recipes in that ever Chilli is basically the same, but everyone thinks theirs is special and everyone adds their own secret ingredients. However, a Chilli competition in the States is on par with a mid season Arena Football Game. Sure it´s fun for everyone involved, but nobody really will plan their day around the event. En cambio a Fanesca competition in Ecuador would probably draw more people than the Rose Bowl and more money would change hands than March Madness. People are redonkulously serious about their Fanesca.

Added Benefits:
You know how wine gets better with age? Is there any food for which the same thing applies? Somehow Fanesca manages to taste better on the second day. All the tastes just continue to mix together and you just can´t beat day old Fanesca.

Big Deal Factor:
My host mom has already prepared two Fanescas so that she doesn´t screw up the Easter batch. People are taking the day off from work tomorrow just to shuck corn and peal beans. I probably will gain fifteen pounds by Sunday afternoon. Just a smashing good time for all involved.

US Easter Factor:
Defintely going to miss chocolate Easter Bunnies and those weird Rabbit puff candies called ¨No Me Acuerdo-Puffs or something maybe¨, but I can´t say that I am going to miss it all that much. In my opinion the US needs to develop some sort of Easter dish pronto. I am having way too much fun Fanescaing it up down South.

But I have never been that much of a sweets guy anyway.

Take Care and HAPPY EASTER/SPRING BREAK!
Kane