Ben has finally earned a chef’s hat! But more on that later. We sign up for a day trip organized by Luisa from our Cuenca church - ICC. 17 of us board a small bus Wednesday morning for the hour drive to the small town of Paute. A little history lesson puts some things we learned into context.
In 1993, heavy rainfall triggered a massive slide of a mountain undermined by illegal mining. The landslide completely blocked the Rio Paute, created a huge dam and flooding the town. A thousand homes and 100 lives were lost. The waters eventually backed up to the suburbs of Cuenca, destroying homes built in the 1600’s and causing unbearable anguish. International engineers arrived to work on the crisis, including the US Corps of Engineers. Ultimately, the disaster led to reforms in Ecuador and a crackdown on illegal gravel mining, but the heart of Paute was broken.
This leads us to Patricio. Patricio is the owner and chef of a popular Paute restaurant, Corvel. Patricio is also a local activist working to improve society and the environment. He is a founder of the Callimanta Collectiva, a group of 10 families who are growing organic herbs, packaging and marketing them with hopes of developing a national and international kmarket. Anita is the farm manager and was wacking cherimoyas out the the trees when we arrived. Anita and I walked along together to see the gardens and she was quite patient with my halting Spanish. She even told me my Spanish was good, which is such a cordial lie.
Besides herbs, they make flavored liquors, quinoa granola and more.
We get to sample apple, mixed fruits and menthe liquors. This trip is definitely fun :)
Patricio asks if anyone wants to volunteer as sous chef - I give Ben a little shove forward. Now Ben is in his element, he just never got the hat before. With guidance from Patricio Ben expertly cracks four eggs into the bowl of quinoa batter. Patricio is demonstrating how to make a stove top pizza with a quinoa crust. Quinoa is another product Patricio is pushing in Paute - because it is healthful and popular outside Ecuador.
The crust is essentially a batter of quinoa, quinoa flour, eggs, cream and herbs. Once cooked on both sides Patricio gives it the usual pizza toppings. We are all quite impressed with the tasty result.
A relentless promoter of Paute and social improvement there, Patricio also shares about another of his “pet” projects - a spay neuter effort for the dogs that roam the streets, often neglected. He sees these projects as “demonstrations” to the local citizens and a way to educate people about ways to improve the community. Another one is a reforestation project - the mountains around Paute have been heavily deforested, adding to the landslide risk. For a $20 donation, we can buy a tree to be planted and receive a Panama hat in exchange. Ben now has two hats. All of these programs share a theme of local economic empowerment combined with social improvement. Patricio tells us that Paute lost its drive and sense of independence along with the flood. All his projects emphasize taking responsibility for one’s community.
Next stop is his restaurant for a lovely lunch in the courtyard. There’s more opportunities to buy the collective’s products too. We can’t possibly resist.
After lunch, we visit some shops, including the tienda of these two sisters who produce amazing canned fruits and vegetables. We buy pears and pickled veggies.
Our final destination is a tiny roadside restaurant for a choclo tortilla demonstration. These corn pancakes are made on small grills all over Cuenca. Ecuadorians are really fond of picking up snacks like these throughout the day. The batter is basically masa with dots of large rehydrated corn kernels and formed around a filling of a cheese and something very yellow.
We all get to make one - mine is on the upper left, perfected formed, I must say.
Just to backtrack a little, back in town David in our group started chatting with these school boys, who had greeted his with “hellos,” David asked them how long they had studied English and they answered, “one year.” He then teased them heartily about not knowing more than “hello” after one year, threatening to talk to their teacher. The boys loved this teasing and stopped by our bus as we were leaving to say goodbye. Personally, I related to how tongue-tied they felt when pressed about their language skills. So often I want to say something to people, but I struggle to get started.
We’re grateful to Luisa at the ICC Church for planning this educational day for us. We really appreciate Patricio and Anita and all the people we met for their passion for Paute and rebuilding the pride and spirit of their town :)
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