El Salvador (Part 2: Pupusas and other food)

Pupusas. The glorious pupusas of El Salvador. We ate them every day we were there except for two, and we never tired of them. Pupusas are the go-to snack and dinner food of El Salvador, and even the Costa Rican girl we met on the plane on our way there gushed about what she perceived to be one of the finer traditional foods of central America. I miss them already.

Tortillas vary from country to country, and from Mexico they seem to get thicker the further south you go. El Salvador likes a thick tortilla with a nice chew, and they are never white flour, only white corn or rice. I'd never encountered a tortilla made from rice meal before. A pupusa is the same dough as a tortilla, stuffed with a filling. You make a ball, poke a well into it, press in the desired fillings, then carefully pat it into a large flat disc without letting the filling escape the sides. The pupusa is fried on a flat top until it's crispy.

There's lots of filling options, but most commonly beans and/or cheese, and chicharron. Chicharron is throughout latin America but it's not the same thing everywhere, in El Salvador it's a highly seasoned shredded pork (in Peru chicharron is deep fried pork crackling). Other pupusa fillings include shredded chicken, roasted jalapenos, and a number of interesting green vegetables I'd never seen anywhere else.  Mora is like a stronger tasting variety of spinach. Loroco, which I love, is the green bud of a vine and tastes a lot like asparagus. Any of the above in the combination you desire, they make them to order. Three or four is a meal and they range in price from forty cents to a dollar each.

Nate eating a pupusa, Craig in the background.

On the tables in every pupuseria are the same accompaniments, a runny and slightly spicy tomato sauce, and always a big jar of awesome pickled cabbage slaw. This pickled cabbage is addictive, it's a mix of shredded cabbage, grated carrots, oregano, sliced jalapenos and sometimes cucumbers. It's spicy, vinegary, salty and is fantastic on top of a pupusa. You eat them with your hands, tearing off pieces and mopping up tomato sauce and topping your bite with a bit of slaw.
Google images of pupusas

We ate most of our San Salvador pupusas a few blocks from our guest house at the same pupuseria, the Rincon Familiar, (the "Family Corner"). It was a total neighbourhood hub and they aren't used to tourists at all. Our first day there the young woman served me with an icy sneer, but the next time we came back she looked surprised to see us and her demeanor transformed. Our absolute enthusiasm for the humble local food there pleased them, and they were lovely, hardworking cooks, standing over a sweltering flattop making tortillas and pupusas all day.

The fruit in El Salvador was amazing, unsurprisingly, and people are obsessed with smoothies, there are cheap licuado stands all over. We were a little early for mango season, there were some around, but they didn't compare with the sublime Peruvian ones. Avocados were mostly the small Hass variety that we all know well, the same as the main variety exported to Canada. The pineapples were the best I'd ever had in my life.

This cool looking yellow fruit is the fruit of a cashew tree - the trees produce two edibles, the nut and the fruit. The nut grows out of the bottom of the yellow fruit, you can see where the stem attaches underneath.

The fruit (right) and nut (left) of a cashew tree.

My fave breakfast at the Rincon Familiar: eggs scrambled with peppers, onions and tomatoes,
beans, soft fresh cheese with piping hot fresh tortillas. ($1.25)