ECUADOR 🇪🇨
It is sometimes surprising what spring can bring, even on a wet and gloomy day. Underneath a blooming tree, and in between two busy churches in Corona, a South American cart selling salchipapas and ceviche de chochos was doing brisk business despite the weather. On a stroll through the neighborhood, there were school children and adults dispersing in all directions from this cart with portions of their signature salchipapas. It was just too tempting to resist.
A $5 order gets you the portion below, loaded with pickled red onions in lime juice, or curtido de cebollas, and topped with ketchup and mayonnaise. The "salchi" from salchipapas comes from "salchicha," the Spanish word for sausage, but this is basically a boiled hot dog. This version is not fancy like you might find in some restaurants, this is the blue collar version you want and crave on the corner.
Ceviche de chochos was completely new to me and I had to ask about it. Basically this is a non-seafood version eaten by people in the Andean Mountains of Ecuador and Perú, sometimes vegetarian and other times not. The base of cooked chocho (lupini) beans, toasted corn, and chifles, or fried plantain chips, is all stacked on the front of the cart to advertise to people that know better.
Again, a $5 portion makes a great snack and is topped with the curtido de cebollas. The chifles can be eaten on their own, but are better deployed as scoops for the ingredients below.
The chochos do not show up in the photos except below very slightly, the pale yellow nugget underneath all the toasted corn. Make sure to mix everything up to get bites full of all the flavor and texture.
The man in charge of the cart also pulled out some pre-grilled meats to warm up and serve over rice for those interested in more than a snack, and said that on Saturdays he had "real" ceviche. When the after school business is slow on weekends, his after church business must pick up in this spot between the popular Catholic and Baptist churches of the area.
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