Ecuadorian baked goods.
What’s even better than sampling warm pastries right out of the oven? Getting a behind-the-scenes look at how they’re made and trying your hand at making them, of course. On our Quito Cuilinary Tour and Cooking Class we got to experience this and so much more.
Gorgeous quesadillas
Our first stop was San Juan Quesadillas, where we were let into the basement baking area before the cafe upstairs was even open to watch the bakers making these delicious pastries. Instead of a savory Tex-Mex sort of quesadilla, in Ecuador quesadillas are sweet breakfast pastries. We watched the bakers pull tray after tray of these cute sweets out of the oven until there were 15 massive trays in total on the cooling racks.
Making quesadillas.
We then got to try making them ourselves, rolling out the dough circles, adding the sweet cheese filling, folding up the edges of the dough, and placing the finished quesadillas on a baking sheet to be put in the oven. After our lesson in quesadilla making we got to head upstairs to the cafe to sample a variety of pastries and breads with some coffee. The quesadillas were still warm and had a crispy texture on the outside with a slightly creamy, soft center.
Quesadillas up close
Our second stop was at Colaciones de Cruz Verde where we watched Luis swing an old, massive copper pot full of peanuts over a low flame. Colaciones are made by slowly adding a simple syrup to the peanuts, bit by bit, over the course of several hours. The results are very sweet, candied peanuts. We also got to try mistelas, which looked like a hard candy but had a thin outer shell of hard candy around a sweet, anise-flavored syrup inside.
Roasting peanuts the old-fashioned way.
For our final stop we visited the home of Graciela, an Ecuadorian woman who is a serious tamale and empanada maker. She sells her food to local restaurants, sometimes hundreds of items a day! Our first lesson from Graciela was in making empanadas de morocho, which were very different from other empanadas we’ve had in South America: the dough was made not from wheat flour, but from morocho flour, a type of corn. When these empanadas were fried, the dough was extremely crispy and delicious. Our second lesson was in making pristinos which are anise-flavored donuts. The dough was rolled out into rectangular strips before we did some tricky origami-like twists and turns to give the donut a pretty shape. As if the donuts weren’t rich enough, Graciela poured a homemade syrup on top of them that was soaked up into the donuts. Heavenly!
Preparing the dough for our dessert.
Throughout the day, our guide Gabriela was cheerful and knowledgeable. It was fun to talk with her about her family’s food traditions and to ask her questions about certain Ecuadorian foods that had been stumping us, like what exactly is that sauce that’s served on nearly every restaurant table in Ecuador? (It’s called aji and is made from tree tomatoes, chili pepper, onions, and sometimes peanuts.)
Empanadas about to be eaten.
We felt like we really experienced the heart and soul of Ecuadorian food during this tour. We didn’t just learn how to make Ecuadorian foods, we also witnessed the passion that the chefs put into their creations.
– Contributed by Angie Jones
Savoring the Flavors of Quito on a Food Tour from Ecuador & The Galapagos Islands Things To Do
