“It tastes like vinegar. ”

“We didn’t add any vinegar.”

-Amy Cao and I tasting our homemade ceviche at 5am before she had to catch her flight back to the US

Watch the latest episode of Amy Blogs Chow’s Stupidly Simple Snacks as the two of us take over my kitchen in Quito to make Ecuadorian ceviche.

What could be even better than traveling with your best friend?

EATING (and then trying to cook) while traveling with your best friend.

When Amy Cao visited me in Quito and brought our replacement video camera after the first one became a casualty of bus robbery, it was a bit of a working holiday for her. Amy’s a non-cooking food-writer-turned-food-show-host who produces charmingly comedic Stupidly Simple Snacks videos for the many of us who, like her, are handicapped in the kitchen.

Since Amy’s life and profession revolve around food (as have many of our best conversations in the eight years we’ve been friends), we spent a lot of time eating.

Eating our way through Ecuador

We toured Quito by day, ducking into tiny mom-and-pop restaurants for set lunches that cost $2. If we were feeling really good about ourselves, we’d splurge on $5 ceviche. At night she’d visit me at work at Uncle Ho’s to dine on fresh shrimp rolls and Vietnamese coffee as she kept up with her website via MacBook.

The professional version

We wandered through local markets drinking exotic fresh fruit juices like taxo, naranjilla and tomate de arbol. We devoured regional dishes like shredded pork with buttery mashed potato cakes topped with a fried egg, not caring that our lunch’s source (a giant fried pig’s body) was staring us in the face. We ate 50 cent cheese empanadas on the bus and sampled $20 guinea pig at a 5-star hotel. In short, we did what we do best: talked at length about the world and the lives we spend traversing it over a long, lovely meal.

It wasn’t all mangos and banana smoothies though. On Amy’s last night in Quito, we decided to roll up our sleeves and take over the kitchen in my apartment in Quito (although, good roommate that I am, decided not to “borrow” Freddie’s orange for our recipe). We filmed the debacle – ahem, culinary success – and Amy created a video so you can laugh along as we endeavor to make Ecuadorian ceviche. And yes, we’re in our pajamas at the end of the video (and yes, we have matching shirts that say Up with Life/Down with Oil in reference to Ecuador’s endangered Yasuni rainforest) because we went out for a celebratory dinner at a hillside hacienda for Amy’s last meal…and then she dragged me out of bed at 5am so we could taste our masterpiece and film ourselves eating raw fish at dawn before she flew back to NYC.

Armed with our ingredients

See what we concoct in an unexpected culinary comedy when this Jet Set Zero cast member stirs the pot with Amy Blogs Chow.

This weekend Ryan and I along with a great new friend took a red eye bus from Quito to the beach town of Atacames in the province of Esmeraldas.  The bus ride was about 6 hours long and we arrived to our destination about 5:45 am and totally bleary eyed and catatonic from our long overnight ride. We boarded a rickshaw taxi and checked into the first hotel listed in our trusty travel guide. We climbed into our bunk beds and proceeded to sleep into about 10 am when we were awoken by the Reggaeton music that is ubiquitous in Atacames.  We started off our day with a bowl of delicious Ceviche de Camaron, which was a refreshing dish consisting of shrimp, onion, and lime juice paired with a bowl of fried banana chips and an appetizing tall glass of chilled coconut milk.  I am a huge fan of breakfast foods and this dish will definitely give llapingachos a run for their money as my current favorite meal in Ecuador.  Atacames is your typical little beach town complete with vendors, thatch roofed huts serving cold drinks, and tour guides offering boat rides to the surrounding beaches.  For only about 1o bucks a person per ride we were able to visit the beaches of Sua and Same, the mangroves and the Island of Birds that was home to dozens of blue footed boobies.  Atacames was a much needed change of pace and is definitely a good time for those visiting the Northern coast of Ecuador.

(more…)