So this week I´ve done a lot of eating. The good kind of eating, you know, the kind where you get to enjoy amazing food and good company together, and afterwards, the only thing you feel is happiness. And it all started with Ananás. Ananás is student-run restaurant at my university. Really, its a brilliant idea: the Culinary students get to practice their skills in a real-life restaurant setting and the Tourism and Business Management students get to practice managing a real business in the service industry, plus the students get paid to do work that pertains to their major, and everybody else gets to enjoy their amazing 4-star quality upscale Dominican food for a lovely 2-star restaurant price. Its win-win-win.
We started off our girls´ night with a complimentary round of champaigne.
Salud!
Next came the appetizer round. The pear and blue cheese salad was killer.
And then the main dish. Sofía and I both ordered the chicken ravioli with pumpkin parmesan sauce and spinach pesto.
Maddy opted for the roasted pork with caramelized apples and mashed potatoes; Sydney the Dorado (fish) filet with coconut curried rice.
And next came the best part: dessert!
Ójala que llueve: Coffee flan
Brazo de Gitano: A swiss role with guanabana and sweet tomato filling. Definitely unique.
Pasion Chocolate: A chocolate cake with a hint of chinola.
We spent the evening sharing each other´s meals, stealing morsels off whatever dish looked most tempting, giggling about Dominican men, and raving about how each bite was better than the last.
The waitress brought out an after dinner aperitif, coffee liquor, and we ended the night with another toast: good food and good friends.
The waitress brought out an after dinner aperitif, coffee liquor, and we ended the night with another toast: good food and good friends.
Students working hard to feed us!
On Sunday I was invited to a friends house to make sancocho. Now let me explain something to you about sancocho, it is the epitamy of Dominican food. If you ask any Dominican what their favorite dish is, 9 times out of 10, they are going to tell you sancocho (mofongo or yarao possibly being the alternate answer). Its a hearty stew made with just about everything you can find: yucca, cebolla (onion), papa (potato), yame (Dominican sweet potato), platano verde (plaintatin), auyama, yautia, apio (celery), cilantro, zanahorria (carrot), naranja agria (bitter orange), aguacate (avocado), and of course a healthy amount of chopped bone-in, skin-on chicken, pork, and sausage.
Making sancocho is often a group effort, and everybody brings a few ingredients to contribute.
Serve it up along with white rice, ice cold beer or soda, ad some swaying bachata music, and you have yourself the perfect Sunday afternoon.
Making sancocho is often a group effort, and everybody brings a few ingredients to contribute.
Serve it up along with white rice, ice cold beer or soda, ad some swaying bachata music, and you have yourself the perfect Sunday afternoon.
Anne is learning how to mash the garlic with a mortar and pestle.
All the ingredients in, now all we have to do is wait! Good thing Galvín built this awesome speaker system entirely by himself from scratch, and completely out of recycled materials. Words cannot even describe how impressive and resourceful this is. Now we can listen to our bachata in true Dominican fashion: loud.
And speaking of bachata, here´s a little somethin´ somethin´ courtesy of Juan Luis Guerra. This song is called "Ójala que Llueve Café" which translates to "I hope it rains coffee." It´s probably one of the most famous bachata songs of all time. Just put this song on while you look at the next set of pictures and imagine the smell of roasted chicken wafting through the house; it will be almost like you are there with me :)
That face says it all
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