November 25, 2010: Lena´s No-oven Ayote Pie

Lena and her ayote.

Nate and I really enjoy cooking Costa Rican recipes. We eat black beans daily and are becoming moderately skilled and tortilla-making. We turn down expensive imported apples and save cheeses that aren´t queso fresco for special treats. We buy olores (onion, garlic, two kinds of cilantro and celery leaves) to flavor our beans, rice, and soups and eat local fruits and veg: notably plentiful and inexpensive are a little summer squash called chayote and pineapples. We are hoping to one day make some yucca (tasy root vegetable and good potatoe substitute) that holds together without becoming so gummy that it is only suitable for paper-mache.

But Thanksgiving is different. Thanksgiving is largely a time for traditional family recipes and it is hard to resign oneself to yucca and beans on such an occasionl. So I have been determined to make this holiday season a time to cook food that would at least be reminiscent of the American ones we know our families will be sitting down to enjoy, while at the same time adding some fun Costa Rican twists.

The challenges to this plan include:

• No oven
• Broken gas stove, only electric skillet and crock pot to work with
• Many traditional American spices, like sage and thyme, are not used here
• Noticeable lack of pumpkins

But I saw this as a chance to get creative. While everyone looked at me blankly when I asked about pumpkins, I realized that squashes are native to the New World and that Costa Ricans traditionally make a sweet squash dish (called chivere) during Easter. I asked around and discovered that my best bet was a big green ayote, which luckily is in season throughout the year here. A very generous family that works at the pulperia (general store) donated an ayote to the effort.

My Steps:

1. Boil/steam ayote pieces in the crock pot. Hope no Costa Ricans peep in and notice that there is no rice being made today, a this may be against the law.

2. Save ayote seeds and dry toast them. Will make delicious pumpkin seen sauce in future.

3. Put cooked ayote in blender to make paste.

4. Mix in condense milk, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg salt. No allspice (called ¨jamaican pepper¨) to be found.

5. Use theory that you are making a sort of flan/pudding type of pie (while ignoring fact that you have never actually made a flan/pudding type of anything that did not come out of a box), and hope you can reduce your saucy mixture in the crock pot. It works!

6. Pour saucy ayote onto crust made of crushed coconut cookies (Called ¨Cocanas¨-- not to be confused with the illegal Columbian ¨cocainas¨) and melted margarine (thanks to Sarah Stone for the idea!).

7. Let cool in fridge. Lena´s Super Special No-oven Ayote Pie is ready for Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all our family and friends. This year we give thanks for all of you and the support and love you have sent our way.