This week was weird. After three months on the road, almost exactly, and spending nearly 24 hours together every day, Clark and I “separated” for about a week. Let me expand on this. We were doing a workaway at a traditional Guatemalan restaurant named Utz Ki’il (meaning ‘good flavor’ in the K’iche-Mayan language). The deal was only for me as you live at the restaurant, which has a small living space that would not be suitable for Arya due to its size, proximity to the restaurant (literally in the back), and presence of the cutest kitten imaginable. We figured Clark would park somewhere in town and I would see him sometime during the day. Turns out this town had little to no street parking suitable for a car of our size. Thankfully, Jacqueline, the restaurant owner and chef, had a small parking lot up a big hill a 30-minute walk away. Short story long, Clark and Arya ended up parking there and through this arrangement, Clark was able to come and help out at the restaurant for the day shift before hiking back up to be with Arya in the evenings. In some sense, this mirrored our last year in NC, when I would leave for work in Asheville while Clark stayed in Raleigh.
During this week, we chopped tons of cebollas (onions), zanahorias (carrots), ejotes (green beans), papas (potatoes), and tomates (tomatoes, duh) in tiny rhombus like shapes. Clark, who always chops his vegetables too bulky, would sometimes have to redo his chopping to get them to the right size (something I have been telling him for years…). The chopping was intense as these vegetables were used in almost all the dishes. The two main traditional dishes cooked that week were estofado and sopa de pepian. The interesting thing, though, is that while in Mexico, they use spices to flavor their dishes and Mexican dishes are actually known to be picante; this was not true in Guatemala. Yes, we used dried chiles and salt, but that was about it in terms of spice. But man oh man, the salsas one could make with the freshest ingredients and nothing else. Let’s just say, I watched and I learned, and I am ready to make my own salsas now, albeit maybe with a bit more kick!
Side story: I made dahl one night for all of us and I had yet to realize that Guatemalans typically do not do picante, so I got all excited and threw in my chiles for tadka, added all my spices in, and voila, I have made the best dahl yet in my life…Sad to say though, it was slightly too picante for the chef and she needed lots of raita to go with it. The rest of us enjoyed it very much though, coupled with the raita and aloo pupusas (a take on aloo parathas, as I did not have wheat flour on me, but used maize flour instead).
