Desayuno Típico: Typical Guatemalan Breakfast | How We Eat

Buenos días, How-We-Eaters! This installment of your favorite food blog is inspired by a recent trip to Guatemala. I spent two weeks there this past March, and I return with many fond memories and one great breakfast idea. Every eatery in this great country offers their own version of desayuno típico. Each is practically the same with a few minor changes. I will explain these options as I go, while I present to you my first attempt at being faithful to the concept.

Preparation:

OK, desayuno típico (literally, typical breakfast) is easy as hell. The hard part is assembling the proper ingredients. The basic version always has eggs (two, fried or scrambled), black refried beans, tortillas, delicious salty square cheese slices (like feta, but slightly softer and less crumbly), and fried plantains (with delicious liquidy sour cream sauce of mysterious origin). There is always some sort of fruit on the side, usually sliced melon. Most of these ingredients are easy enough to acquire at your local supermarket, but the cheese and the cream presented the biggest challenge. Last time I was in San Francisco, I visited a store in the South Bay that semmed to have everything I needed. I found a brick of cheese that had a promising-sounding Spanish name on it, and was the right shape and color (square and white). As for the cream, well, they had something there called “Mexican Table Cream” and I figured that might be a lucky guess. Well, the cheese was all wrong. It was hard in consistence and curd-like in flavor. Not bad, though! The table cream was a very poor choice. It was practically flavorless (in spite of containing “natural butter flavor”), and the ingredients were scary enough not to serve in mixed company. As I was preparing this meal for guests, I left the cream in the fridge. Fine breakfast guest Trevor indicated that perhaps the cream I was looking for was crema natural. This is Mexican-style sour cream, and his description of it sounded an awful lot like what I had in Guatemala. Thanks, Trev-Trev! Maybe next time.

Cooking:

Some tips for making this right! First, have Camille do the scramb. She’s good at it. For the plantains, no one else at the house had any good advice for how to appropach this. We cut the plantain into discs about 1/2″ thick, maybe thicker, and fried them on medium-high heat in a tablespoon of butter. They got blackened pretty fast and thus did not cook all the way through. They still tasted OK, but they weren’t as tender or sweet as I remember them. Lower heat, thinner slices, and more butter may be the key. And don’t forget the crema natural! For the frijoles refritos, you just need to heat them. This is easy. But make sure you get the Mexican kind and not some fancy organic Amy’s brand version. I can’t say for sure whether or not it makes a difference, but the Mexican kind is just fantastic, and it’s not worth the risk. Tortillas should be corn and always served hot. Spend a little extra on good tortillas, for I propose that they are the cornerstone of this breakfast. Cheese? I have no good advice here. As soon as I find out, you loyal readers will be the first to know. And side fruit of choice: avocado. It’s a big hit. The cold avo goes good with the hot eggs. Serve with good hot sauce. And don’t forget the bacon. Make sure it’s good bacon. Not so típico! (Or is it?)

-Sav

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 12th, 2011 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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