Food Glossary: Casado

Casado is a typical Costa Rican meal available, and popular, for either lunch or dinner.  It is really yummy and a cheap meal and one of my favourite discoveries on my trip to Latin America.  The word 'casado' means 'married-one' and the dish gained this name by customers requesting a typical home cooked meal (similar to one their wife would prepare) which generally included gallo pinto, or separate rice and beans, plantain, meat, salad, possibly a tortilla or potato salad.  You MUST try!

Review: Chunches café, Santa Elena/Monteverde, Costa Rica

On our second day at Monteverde we were feeling a little more energetic and adventurous so we decided to do a ‘canopy tour’.  This is where you travel through the forest way above the ground on a series of zip line ropes!  We knew we needed a good filling breakfast to get us through the day so we headed to chunches café which was recommended by a local, and we were very happy with the choice!

The café is on the first floor above a bookshop that also sells an assortment of touristy gifts.  The design and décor is very simple and the café is really light as the whole back wall is windowed.  It has some nice batik artwork on the walls, however, it does look out onto not a very attractive piece of land that we thought could be made into a beautiful hammock garden!!

We decided to go for the chicken special breakfast which consisted of gallo pinto, chicken, avocado, tomato and plantain.  It was delicious and with one look some of our friends ordered the same on arrival.  Whilst eating I had noticed the scrummy looking cakes on the counter and couldn’t resist in getting a few for the group.  We tried the banana bread and a chocolate chip/oat flapjack/biscuit.  Well, they were AMAZING!  The banana bread I think is the best I have ever tried…I even went back and asked if I could have the recipe and she said both were secrets!  The other biscuit was equally as delicious, it was moist, sweet, crunchy and chocolatey!  These cakes were so nice that I bought their final batch the following morning for our travels and I didn’t even stop or think to take a photo of them, so you will just have to trust my judgement and stop by the café if you are in Santa Elena.

Food Glossary: Gallo Pinto

Hmmmmmm!  How did I live without gallo pinto before going to Nicaragua?!  The mix is simply rice with beans (arroz con frijoles) and it is the national dish in both Costa Rica and Nicaragua.  I personally prefer Nicaraguan pinto (its more commonly made with red beans whereas Costa Rican pinto is usually made with black beans).  Also Nicaraguans tend to use the juice from the beans to make the gallo pinto more ‘saucy’ whilst the costa Rican pinto is drier.  Gallo pinto can be found any time of day – especially at breakfast with eggs or tomatoes or cuajada cheese.  It can be plain or have onion, peppers and coriander added for extra flavour.  The name gallo pinto means ‘speckled rooster’ which comes from the look of the dish with the colours mixed together.