After touring UNITEC (post-secondary education institution - see previous post), I had one of the most amazing and educational lunches of my life. We got a personalized demonstration of Colombian cuisine led by the head of the Gastronomy department. This man fell into the category of "people who love their job and want to passionately share it with others," a category I'm quite fond of.
First, he passed around a tropical fruit called curuba, or banana passionfruit. In the pantheon of Colombian food, fruit is completely central. Every meal is served with fresh fruit juice. The grocery store doesn't even have much packaged juice, because you're really supposed to drink it fresh. Street corners are peppered with vendors squeezing the juice to sell to passersby. The saying goes that there is (at least) one fruit for every day of the year here in Colombia. The curuba smelled and tasted good, sort of tangy and sweet.
The gastronomy demonstration continued with an explanation of ajiaco, a typical Colombian soup made with chicken broth and 3 kinds of potatoes. Ajiaco is made differently in each region, but we would be eating the "ajiaco santafereño," or "ajiaco from Bogotá." (Santa Fe is the name of the historical downtown area.) It features the guasca weed, which he passed around for us to smell, taste and touch. He said that although today we'd each get a plate of accompaniments from which to choose, typically these additions are shared family-style. The negotiation of passing and sharing your soup toppings (avocado, sour cream, capers, rice, corn, and chicken) is an important familial and cultural act. The variation of ajiaco in different regions of the country also sheds light on Colombia's diversity. "It's us, in a bowl," he mused. His students aren't just trained in techniques of cooking, but in the art of gastronomy and the cultural weight and meaning behind ingredients and preparations.
Lunch was also accompanied by an aguapanela (sugar cane juice) lemonade and a chocolate berry dessert. The food we tasted, with its mixture of starchy and smooth textures and brothy and sweet flavors, was a powerful nonverbal introduction to Colombia. The fact that it was treated with both deep passion and academic curiosity would prove emblematic of a lot of my experience to come.