I had an issue a few months ago, and was forced to remove and reinstall the web site. Today I was able to get it back online with all the original Posts and reviews. There is also a nice section for trading recipes!

All my readers are invited to join and give your opinion, good or bad, on any restaurant, soda or other eatery here in Costa Rica. The Web Site is Costa Rica Eateries and I hope you will call visit and add your favorite places to eat in Costa Rica. Enjoy!

A recent post to Costa Rica Eateries from Paul Mitchell povides a nice list of Costa Rica cookbooks for those who need their daily dose of something Costa Rican.

From Costa Rica Eateries…

For those of you who have visited Costa Rica and liked the food and would like to be able to prepare some of the dishes yourselves… Or for any of you who live in Costa Rica but maybe don’t go out to eat very often for budgetary or other reasons yet still like the local food…

…Here is a brief list of interesting cookbooks about costarrican cuisine. At least one of them explains a lot about fresh fruits and vegetables and how they are used in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica’s Best Dishes, by Dorotea; pub. Servicios Editoriales Cento America, S.A. (SECASA), San Pedro Montes de Oca, San José, Costa Rica; c. 1976.

This is the first cookbook I ever bought while travelling in Costa Rica on my first visit. Don’t know if it is still in print. A small, slim volume of a mere 84 pages, offers explanations of the most usual and popular dishes of the country plus explanations about the ones you would find on your plate if you were a tico. In english with a few color photos of the prepared dishes. A practical little book with clear instructions offering a basic introduction to tico foods.

Costa Rican Typical Foods, by Carmen de Musmani & Lupita de Weiler; Gráfica-Litho-Offset SA, Costa Rica, 1992.

Fifty some odd recipes with simple line illustrations and a usefull glossary of terms to help you get started. Another useful, easy-to-follow collection of practical and popular tico recipes. Should be available in larger bookstores like Librería Lehmann in San José centro.
Sixty-three pages, in english.

My Kitchen – Typical Recipes, by Nelly Urbina Castro; Diseño 7 Procucción Gráfica SA, 5th ed., 2003.

An ambitious, well-conceived cookbook with conversions for both measurements and oven temperatures (F. and C.). It includes an extensive glossary and index plus the recipes are categorized by type: Desserts, Drinks, etc. Contains many interesting recipes beyond basic everyday fare, but nothing overly convoluted.
In english, 161 pages. Also published in a spanish edition.

Sabor!: A Guide to Tropical Fruits and Vegetables and Central American Foods, by Carolina Avila and Marilyn Root; Publicaciones de Las Américas S.S., Grecia, Alajulea, Costa Rica; 1997.

A wonderful book with clear line drawings and plentiful explanations of the fresh ingredients (fruits and veggies) that you will encounter in Costa Rica (and Central America), plus how to use them along with lots of recipes. This book is very thorough, including a section on meats, the cuts and their names in central america. Also offers an extensive bilingual list of food and cooking terms in english with the spanish translation next to it. Has oven temps and mesaurement coversions, as well. I highly recommend this cookbook. And it’s a fun ‘read’, too. Buy several copies to bring home as souveniers/gifts for your friends. (You’ll wish you had if you don’t.) In english, 218 pages.

Thanks to those who tested the site. Reading the same old pages for errors is booooring, but you really helped!

Anyway… here it is: The REAL Costa Rica

Enjoy!

So this week, I will be publishing a NEW Real Costa Rica. It is in Beta right now being checked by friends and volunteers. The design is totally different. The menu system has been revised again, new photos have been added, the 30 or so pages that were added since last year will now be available in the menu system (can you imagine!) instead of having to find them by using search, and finally, a whole NEW search engine will be installed. Some pages will download faster.

Another new thing… the site is now just too big for me to handle and increasingly, I am getting more detailed questions on a bunch of topics where I am not expert. For this reason, I am looking for volunteers to edit and maintain a specific subject, like maybe the pages on Surfing, Religion, or others, so if you have knowledge of a specific topic about Costa Rica, please contact me.

I cannot post the URL (web address) as I do not want the search engines to visit the Beta location, but if anyone wants a sneak peek… let me know.

First, they made us watch a lame video, but they soon made up for it by letting us taste the three different types of roasts. They are: claro, medio, y oscuro, otherwise known as light, medium, and dark. In my opinion, the medium roast was the best, but hey, that’s just me. Then they forced us all to wear hard hats, so of course we had to take lots of pictures of everyone looking like fools. Once we calmed down, they took us through the factory (if you could call it that, it was open-air) and showed us the whole process. It basically goes like this:

First, the beans are separated into three different levels of quality. This is done by filling massive vats of coffee beans with water. The best beans sink to the bottom, and the worst ones rise to the top. I gathered that this process is repeated multiple times. Second, the beans are dried. There are two different ways of doing this: sun drying, and machine drying. The sun-dried beans are of a better quality than the machine dried ones. It takes well over 100 days to sun dry beans properly, so this can only be done for half the year as it rains almost every day during the other half of the year. The machine drying process only takes 24 or so hours to do, so you can bet that most of the time you’re drinking machine-dried coffee. After that, they roast the beans in a big cylinder. It takes approximately 17-20 minutes for lightly roasted beans, 25 minutes for a medium roast, and 30 minutes for a darker roast. Then all the beans flow out of the toaster, where they are moved around in circles by a cool looking machine in order to cool. After that, the beans are either ground and packaged, or just packaged, and then shipped.

After the tour, they gave us the most delicious cold coffee drink I’ve ever tasted! I had 4 cups, and then I got the recipe. It is as follows:

2 cups milk
1-2 tsp. sugar
1-2 oz. espresso
1-2 oz. flavored syrup (they used mint, yum!)
and a little bit of ice cream

Mix ingredients together and blend! It’s REALLY good, I promise.

As Costa Rica has become a hot spot for tourism over the past few years, not unexpectedly, there have been a slew of new eateries popping up all over the country. My wife and I like to dine out, and we generally do so about once per week, so as we do, I plan to add my thoughts on these places.

I don’t know about you, but I am not always happy with the “professional” reviews you see here and there. I enjoy good food, but I am not a gourmet and would often rather hear from a friend or acquaintance of a new place to eat. For instance I enjoy a good wine… but I cannot identify a Effete LePew 1963 from Ripple. The gourmets kinda go over-the-top on stuff when all I really wanna know is: 1. Is the food good? and 2. What does it cost?

But with everyone who discusses restaurants, I eventually know exactly whose opinion is worth listening to and whose opinion is maybe less fitting my tastes. i.e I know who to believe!

So all you locals and visitors to Costa Rica, take five minutes and share what you know about your favorite Costa Rica restaurant… good or bad! Costa Rica Eateries!

To me, it has always been a wonder why folks move to a foreign country like Costa Rica only to live in residential strongholds of their countrymen and spend all their time at Tony Romas, TGIFridays, etc.

Many never make an attempt to learn the language nor the customs of the new country. I guess they just want to be able to say they live in Costa Rica.

If there is one dish that perhaps represents Costa Rican cuisine more than any other, it has to be Gallo Pinto. Anyone considering a move to Costa Rica should give this dish a try because it will most certainly be in your life here in country!

This simple (sort of) dish contains the requisite rice and beans, but the seasonings and cooking make all the difference. Normally, this is more of a breakfast dish… often served with eggs, a breakfast meat etc., but it is by no means limited to breakfast. In fact, we had it for dinner last night.

I have sampled well over a hundred ‘versions’ of GP since I have lived here. Very few are crummy. Some are ummmm… OK. Others are good… and then there are the really good recipes. My housekeeper Jeanette makes a really good gallo pinto. My wifey makes one that rivals Jeanette’s. This is unusual because Luisa can’t make coffee. This to me is astonishing! A Tica who cannot make coffee. Oh well… she is so great in so many other areas. Also, it is really good to have a new bride who doesn’t speak English nor understand the term blog!

Now to REALLY digress…. ML just woke up and called me back to bed for morning H and K. She asked what I was doing and I told her (which is why she doesn’t have to learn English… duh!). I have tried to explain the concept of the blog, but though she understands my words, I think the concept of publishing ones diary is anathema. Diaries are private. Her’s is… all 57 volumes! Anyway, I asked her how she can make such a fine GP and suck at making coffee, She just laughed and laughed and snuggled closer. Geez I adore this woman. Ten days left.

OK… back to the subject.

The BEST Gallo Pinto though, is made by Kembly, my son’s girlfriend (novia) here in Costa Rica. Kembly can make coffee too, but her GP is special. After annoying her for many months, she finally gave me the recipe which I am adding below for anyone who is interested. In English and in Spanish BTW. Enjoy! Coming to CR? Try your hand at the national dish!

Gallo Pinto

Ingredients

1 cup of cooked rice
1 cup of cooked beans
1 chopped onion (small)
1 small chopped red pepper
2 cloves of garlic chopped
1 tbs oil
¼ cup chopped cilantro
4 Tbs. Salsa Lizano  (available in our online store) – (can useWorcestershire sauce but don’t expect the same taste!)
Pinch of black pepper
1 tbs seasoning

How to prepare
1. Fry onion, red pepper, garlic, cilantro in the vegetable oil, about 3 minutes.
2. Pour in the beans and add the sauce, black pepper and seasoning. Let it cook for a few minutes, but don’t let it dry out.
3. Pour in the cooked rice and mix it with the beans

Enjoy with:
Sour Cream
Platanos maduros
Eggs (fried or scrambled )

Or in Spanish

Gallo Pinto

Ingredientes

1 taza de Arroz cocinado (sencillo reventado)
1 taza de frijoles cocinados con poco caldo (sencillos en el sabor)
1 chile rojo picado
1 cebolla picada fina
2 cdas cilantro picado muy fino
1 cdta aceite
1 cda de ajo
4 cdas de Salsa Lizano (available in our online store)
2 pizca de pimienta negra
1 cubito

Preparación

1- Se sofrien en el aceite la cebolla, el chile, el culantro, ajo.
2- Cuando están muy crujientes se les agrega los frijoles cocidos y la salsa lizano, pimienta negra y cubito.
3- Se agrega el arroz y se frien un poco todos juntos para mezclar sabores.
4- Se dejan un momento en reposo , luego se mueve con un cucharon los ingredientes para que se mezclen.

Se puede acompañar con Natilla
Platanos maduros
Huevos fritos o revueltos