Costa Rica menus eye-opening, mouth-watering

SAN JOSECITO, Costa Rica -- Each member of our LEAMIS International Ministries team to Costa Rica stayed with a different family. Frank Schroer, our team leader, lived with welder Gerardo and his wife, Abigail, in San Isidro.

Both Abigail and Gerardo are extroverts. When Frank playfully referred to Abigail (who's about his age or a little younger) as his surrogate "mom" in Costa Rica, she responded in mock outrage. Gerardo, who creates gates and other iron projects from a shop in his garage, was the ideal choice to play the Devil in a swordfight with Frank that illustrated one of Frank's sermons during our trip.

I stayed, as I mentioned on Sunday, with Dan and Melissa Shockley, an American ex-pat and his native Costa Rican wife. (Costa Ricans refer to themselves as "Ticos" or "Ticas" depending on gender.) Dan and Melissa lived in a small home in San Josecito, not far from Pastor Marlon's church; I had to walk to church one morning, when Dan had taken their car to work, and it took me about 10 minutes.

Megan Siegrist stayed with Aida and her family (I never got her husband's name) on the far side of San Josecito, in a slightly more rural area near some national park land. One day, at the end of our scheduled activities, we all went to Aida's to drop Megan off and to enjoy a special treat.

We referred to what we were served as "tortillas," but Aida had a different name for them, which I somehow forgot to write in my ever-present trip journal.

Traditional corn tortillas, as I learned from Alton Brown on the Food Network, are made from dry field corn which has been treated with slaked lime. The lime removes the outer layers of the corn but also changes its chemical makeup, which actually releases several nutrients that the body can't extract from untreated corn. The treated corn is ground into a stiff dough, which is flattened in a press before being cooked.

What Aida made was nothing like those traditional corn tortillas, but in many ways it was tastier and more fun. Aida started with fresh sweet corn, shucked and cleaned by family members in a shed outside her comfortable home. The shack also housed a wood-burning stove. The raw kernels were cut into a bowl and then pulverized in a food processor. This made a thick batter that Aida ladled onto the wood stove, spreading it out to form a very thin pancake. The pancakes had a delicious corn flavor, and there was crema (a Latin American style of sour cream) on the table to spread on them. We ate them with a fork, like you would a pancake, and they were absolutely delicious.

In retrospect, I think it's typical of Costa Rica that Aida was using both a food processor and a wood stove. The country seems to have a vibrant mix of old and new, of prosperity and simplicity, of natives and expatriates.

Beans and rice

Much of Costa Rica's cuisine, like the cuisine of its neighbors in Central America, revolves around a rice-and-black-bean dish called pinto (short for gallo pinto, literally "speckled rooster"). It's not bad at all, although a spoiled American like me can get tired of it by the end of the trip. It can show up at any meal, including breakfast.

You also get rice on its own.

Given the climate, there's also plenty of delicious fresh fruit, including mangoes, bananas, plantains and other items. During a cross-country road trip to the beach one day, we stopped at a little diner for breakfast and Megan, who avoids meat and poultry, got one of our hosts to walk with her across the street to a little fruit stand. One of the things she returned with was a little red spiky fruit that reminded me of a sea urchin. You tore away the spiny skin to reveal a fruit inside which looked like a peeled grape, except for its extra-large pit. It was terrific, whatever it was.

Megan also got to enjoy some fresh coconut from a tree at Aida's house.

Many restaurants have, on the table, a jar of hot pickled carrot slices and onions, which were tangy and delicious.

Also on many tables is Lizano sauce, or some generic equivalent. This was my favorite culinary discovery of the trip, and I brought back a huge bottle of the condiment. It's very difficult to describe -- green, salty and with a flavor that is part cumin, part steak sauce, but very difficult to compare to anything else.

A cheesy discovery

Hearts of palm ("palmito" in Spanish) are common as an ingredient or on their own in Costa Rica. Gerardo had a jar of them one night when we were eating dinner at his house. At the end of the trip, when we spent a couple of nights in a nice hotel with two fancy restaruants, there were hearts of palm in various salads and other dishes.

You can also get them here in the states, although I can't figure out for the life of me why you would want to. If you forced me to eat them, I would have to try to drown them in Lizano sauce.

I do, however, like something else that is named for the palmito. On our drive from Heredia to La Fortuna, I kept seeing signs for roadside businesses selling "queso palmito" and made a comment that we must be in a dairy region. Max, our driver, confirmed this, and pulled over at the next such store. He bought us a little baseball-sized glob of the cheese. It has a texture like string cheese, but a saltier and sharper flavor, and it was great. I have no idea why it's named for hearts of palm.

Even though I'm not much of a coffee drinker, I had a few cups of coffee while in Costa Rica, and brought back some Costa Rican-grown coffee to share. Coffee is one of the country's major products. I'd been told to look for Britt, which sometimes shows up as an import brand here in the states. I've been told that the Britt plantation tour is a great thing to do in Costa Rica, but we didn't get the chance on this trip. At any rate, the locals seemed to favor a brand called Cafe 1820, which is somewhat less expensive.

WEDNESDAY: Send more tourists