Encebollado

Saturday mornings in Quito were still like the sun, and they felt just as hot. I used to walk to Chelita’s house for breakfast. The sun burnt my eyelids,  my neck. The Andean sun was ever, always there. 

After breakfast, Chelita asked her son, JC, to go to the market in Cotocollao to buy the week’s food.  He headed out, and I tagged along, since I couldn’t get enough of the market in those days. The time involved and the ordeal of the trip didn’t matter.   

The shopping list was always the same:

• Cebolla paitena : red onion
• Tomatoes 
• Papa criolla : Potatoes
• Papa navo : turnip
• Cebolla verde : green onions
• Garlic
• Oranges
• Grains
• Choclo : corn
• Col (lots for the dogs soup) : cabbage
• Carrots
• Tree tomatoes
• Habas : favas
• Verdes : green plantains
• Maduros : brown plantains
• Culantro : a tender form of cilantro
• Quinoa
• Arroz de cebada : barley

The Cotocollao market fed the whole of Quito Norte. It was a blacked-soiled, teeming monster. All foods were sold there – not just fruit and vegetables, but also meats hanging from hooks, stacks of whole fish, grains in mounds, hot meals, fried, stewed, grilled, steamed . . .

Shopping there was terrifically difficult. It required a lot of strength and real charm (of which I had none, but JC had a surfeit).  It was invigorating, unforgettable, but rarely fun.

I armed myself with deep woven bags, and followed JC in. 

The smells hit me like a hammer. The ripe fruits smelled joyous, the rotten stunk like oversexed drunks. There was the ammonia burst of urine, chicken feathers, greasy cooking smoke, and the garlicky steam that rose from fried pork and potatoes. Grilled platanos gave off a tangy smell, and fried ones a molasses smell.  The brutal lemon bite of herbs cut through the air.  We walked through the market, and all of that hit us. All that, and diesel fumes, and ripe, wet dirt.    

Above lingered the sweet scent of roses, and the dove calls of the comadres.   

We turned down a row of red onions – paitenas. The comadres sat behind them. They had already plucked the paitenas from their brittle outer shells and arranged them in small pyramids, six for a price. They shimmered under sunlight. We walked past, and the comadres called, a ver la paitena, a ver la paitena.

The comadres only really noticed JC. He sidled up to them with his green eyes. There was laughter, and a price quoted I’d never dream of getting. JC dropped the six beautiful, perfect paitenas into his bag. He charmed enough for one extra onion, a bit smaller, but no less perfect, la yapa. 

I followed behind JC. He was taller than almost everyone, with pale skin and raven hair, and a cigarette between his fingers. The comadres called out to him wherever he walked.

When our cheeks were ruddy with dust and sun, when our shoulders and arms were burdened to their limits, we made our way to the car.

We had bags of potatoes and corn, platanos, quinoa, oranges, the herbs still mixed in soil, and, on top, and the luminous paitenas. It felt like we brought back the whole market, the pure stink of a harvest.

When we returned, JC disappeared into the darkness of the house.  I settled in the kitchen with Chelita.   

Chelita made me alive again. After the market, Chelita’s kitchen was a refuge. The smells were smaller there, but more delicate, something I could touch. We laughed together for a time, and then she spotted the paitenas. She began chopping them into vigorous half-moons. 

I’d always been attracted to the paitena. It’s called a red onion, but, of course, it’s purple – a jewel-like purple. It is so much livelier than any other onion. Chelita often sliced the whole vegetable into delicate rounds, and then dunked them into vinegar and sugar. The slivers shined, the purple relaxing into pink. She’d top these pickles over locro de aguacate (Ecuadorian Potato Soup with Avocado), a rose shimmer over a pale green, vinegary onions over warmed avocados.   

The paitena is used in Ecuadorian cooking for all sorts of dishes. You’ll find them in sofritos, in locros, in ceviches. In dishes that take seconds to make, and in dishes that take the whole of the afternoon. After a long day at the market, Chelita fed us quickly. She boiled some potatoes, and prepared encebollado. 

Encebollado means, loosely, “onioned” – a delightful name. Chelita chopped the paitenas into those vigorous half-moons, and then cracked them open. She settled the loosened strips into a white enamel bowl, and on top of that, she added some of the tomatoes we had just bought.

Chelita sliced those into half-moons as well, same shape, just thicker. Over that, she poured vinegar and oil, and then some salt and pepper on top. She served this profoundly simple salad next to the boiled papas criollas, and, next to that, a slice of cheese. And that was it.