Part Two: La Paz, Bolivia

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Images below are thumbnails. Click on them to see a larger version.

Breakfast at Mathuresh’s house was a feast – fresh cheese (queso blanco), homemade jams, fresh strawberries, a local fruit called pepinos, delectable bananas, cereal made from a local pseudo-grain called quinoa, and lots of mate de coca. Today is the Vedic fasting day of Ekadasi so we had chewy pan de yucca (click for recipe) instead of the usual bread. Pan de yucca is a bread (pan) made from the tubers of the tropical plant yucca (also known variously as cassava, manioc or tapioca root).


Pictured left are some of the many varieties of local Bolivian bananas, and the curious striped melon-like fruits pepinos, with their juicy texture and fresh, slightly sour subtle flavour. The large tubers of cassava, native of South America, were introduced into the tropics of Asia by the Portugese in the 17th century. The sweet variety (pictured above, at a La Paz market) are now used as a vegetable in the Pacific Islands, Asia and South America, and also for the production of tapioca pearls. This is done by a complex method of grating, washing, pressing through fine meshes and heating.

Breads and sweet cakes made from Cassava are dearly loved wherever the tubers are grown and available. They are not light and fluffy though, but rather dense, glutinous and solid. With some varieties of cassava, the vegetable is not peeled like a potato because the outer skin is very tough. Rather, the skin is cut off with a knife. Also, sometimes there is a tough inedible inner core which needs to be removed before serving. Cassava can be boiled, baked or fried. When fried, it is delicious served with a little chili powder and salt, with a wonderful texture of perfectly oven-roasted potatoes, but crisper than potatoes can ever be, with an crusty shell and fluffy interior.

Pictured above are some local strawberries, with an intense 'home-grown' flavour reminiscent of the ones my father used to cultivate when I was a young lad in England. Pictured left are rounds of fresh cheese at a La Paz market stall. Throughout the world, varieties of fresh cheese abound. I saw rounds of Queso blanco,  literally 'white cheese', throughout my tour of the Andean countries. It is often prepared by acid coagulation, and sometimes using rennet, so it is good to enquire as to its production methods. For breakfast today, we ate it raw, sliced thin. Click for information on how to prepare your own fresh cheese.

Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) has been culivated in the South American Andes for 5000 years. Given the name 'the mother grain' by ancient farmers, it was cultivated alongside potatoes as a staple crop, and revered as sacred due to its hardiness, nutritional value, and versatility. Like buckwheat, it is called a grain, but it is technically the fruit of a plant in the Chenopodium family. The tiny grains of Quinoa are delicious, brimming with excellent nutitional value, and are cooked in many, many ways throughout the Andean regions of South America. Click for more information about quinoa.

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