Paches!!

So I spent the day (and I do mean the entire day) making paches which are tamales steamed in giant green leaves. If you read my last blog then you know that I bought a Guatemalan cookbook in Spanish a few days ago and decided this should be my first recipe. Here are the steps… Go to the farmers market and find all the ingredients and try to make them yourselves. Or just come visit me in Guatemala and I’ll make them for you. :)

These first 3 pictures are of the ingredients you need to make the paches. These giant green leaves are called hojas de mashan. The recipe calls for 1 ½ manojos (bundles).

It took me 2 trips to the market and a stop at each of the 4 grocery stores in Pana to get all the ingredients.

This is the plant that you use to tie the paches closed. It is called ciabaque and you have to pull them apart to make them ribbon sized.

Ok… step one. Peel, cut, and boil the potatoes until they are mashable (should be a word). On a side note please notice the view of the volcano out the window... favorite thing about our house.

Next step: Let the potatoes cool down for a 2 hours while you go to Spanish school and laugh with your teacher and the owner of the school about how you’re a gringa attempting to make paches. (I’m going to take Candalaria and Gladys paches on Monday to prove I made them semi correctly).

Next cut up the tomatoes and tomatillos and cook them with a little water and 2 chilies guake.

Here are the chili guakes. I was told to be sure to take out all the seeds before I added them to the pot or it would be unbearably spicy.

Now toast 2 onzas (ounces) de ajonjoli (sesame seeds) and 2 onzas de pepitona (squash seeds).

After you blend the tomato/tomatillo/chili guake mixture with the toasted seeds add the chicken and bring to a boil for 6 minutes.

Next melt a libra (pound) of butter. You are actually suppose to use lard, but 1. Where do you even buy lard and 2. Gross, so I used butter instead.

After you mash the potatoes (with a plastic cup because you don’t have anything else to use) add in about half of the salsa mixture and the butter. This is the longest process, but you have to do it for a long time until get all the lumps out of the potatoes.

Pick the chicken off of the bone even though you are grossed out by having to play with the rawish chicken it is ok because it will finish cooking through while the paches are being steamed. (I was told not to cook it all the way through. I thought it was odd also).

Next slice up some red peppers and throw some olives on the counter to make an assembly line of ingredients to put inside the paches.

 Ok... time to build your paches. Pick out one of the smaller leaves and put it all together. A few spoonfuls of the potato mixture with 2 strips of the red pepper, 2 olives, chicken, and some of the salsa on top.

 After you fold that leaf around the mixture flip it over and wrap it inside one of the bigger leaves.

 Next step is to use the cibaques to tie it together like a little present. I ended up tying them together from both ends even though this picture only shows it tied once.

 Pretty little paches. This recipe made 13 of them. So much work!

 Now how to cook them. You line the pot with leaves so that the paches do not touch the sides or bottom of the pot.

 Next line the paches along the edge of the pot and put some water in the middle. Then fold over the leaves sticking out of the pot and put a frying pan on top as a lid so they can steam for about 40 minutes. (I had to do 3 rounds of tamales because I didn't have a large enough pot to hold all 13).

These are what they look like after they are cooked. I opened one right when I took it out of the water and it wasn't firm like a tamale should be. I then realized that I needed to let them sit for awhile. I put them in the freezer and went to a friends house to watch a movie tonight. By the time I came home they were perfect. I don't know if they didn't set up at first because they had to have that time to firm up or if it was because I used butter instead of lard. Who knows, but it doesn't really matter because they eventually turned out right.

So here is the finished product. Not the prettiest thing you have ever seen, but Heather assured me that that is how they always look when you open them.

It needed a little salt (I had forgotten to add any salt while I was cooking them, but other than that it was delicious! This week is surgery week at the clinic and I am going to be working really long hours, so it will be helpful to bring these for lunch and/or eat them for dinner.

Also when I got home Heather had made empanadas for dinner and saved me one. I laughed at how much of a Guatemalan dinner I had tonight. Maybe Heather and I will start selling our food on the streets around Pana. :)

Hope you enjoyed the recipe. I mainly just wanted to write it all down with pictures, so I wouldn't forget how to make them. I ended up not following the recipe exactly because the ladies at the Spanish school told me to swap some of the ingredients and to make them a little differently than the cookbook said to.

Tomorrow is triage day where there are suppose to be about 400 people at the clinic trying to get inside to see the doctors with the hope of having surgery this week. I am excited to experience my first surgery week and to work with the team. We are leaving at 6:15 tomorrow morning, so I better get to bed. Night peeps.