Issue #6, The Costa Rica Issue
Let's Get Lost, March 16, 2024
In this issue
+ What we love about Costa Rica plus ELEVEN (11!) new recipes inspired by our time there
+ What to make this week
A quick note before we get to it, the length of this post means it might be truncated in your inbox – just click to expand and read the whole thing or read it directly on rebeccablackwell.com.
The first time we went to Costa Rica I was just tagging along on one of Steve’s work trips. It was in the middle of their rainy season and I was sick with bronchitis the entire week. It rained every day all day and I had to overcome my embarrassment over my constant hacking because I’ll be dammed if I was going to just stay in the hotel room all week.
Despite the enormous amount of rain and coughing, we fell in love with Costa Rica almost instantly and decided then and there to plan a return trip.
The return trip took the form of a family Christmas present and the 5 of us spent a week on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica in January of 2019. Despite a bout of food poisoning that took us all down for about 24 hours, we went jungle hiking with the monkeys and sloths, dolphin watching, toured a chocolate farm, explored several costal towns, and spent hours on the beach that was right across from our rental house. I have many good memories of that week.
Our most recent trip was just a few weeks ago and it was just Steve and I, much to the chagrin of our girls who gave us so. much. grief about not taking them with us. 🤷🏻♀️
This time around we spent a few days in the capital city of San Jose then drove up into the central mountains, spending time in Cuidad Quesada, La Fortuna, and the Pacific coast.
If you are ever planning a trip to Costa Rica, please reach out. I’ll happily share our experience and have many recommendations to offer. What I really want to share with you today is not what we did while we were there but why we love Costa Rica so much.
I think I could boil it down to three things:
the people
the location
the food
The people!
The real motivation for our visit to Costa Rica this year are the guys in this photo. All of them either work with Steve now or have worked with Steve in the past and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a better group of humans. They are some of the most genuine, hard working, open hearted, kind people we’ve ever met and getting to spend a couple of evenings with them was the highlight of our trip.
But, this has been our experience with people all over Costa Rica. They are welcoming and warm, helpful and accommodating, friendly and generous.
They are proud of their country in a way that makes them want to share it with you. Everywhere we went, it seemed that people were genuinely excited for us to see and experience all that their country had to offer. They love Costa Rica and they want you to love it too.
A couple of examples: While in La Fortuna we booked a sunset boat tour on Lake Arenal. The day of our tour was overcast and rainy so we arrived to find that we were the only two people on the boat that night. Rather than try and reschedule us for a different night, the tour guide seemed to relish the opportunity for a more intimate discussion of the history and culture of the area. He had lived there his whole life and told us stories of his father and grandfather, who had also lived in the area their whole lives. He was a treasure trove of information and his enthusiasm for his country was contagious.
At our hotel in San Jose, an elderly man who worked the hotel’s breakfast buffet welcomed me each day with a “Buenos días señorita” and then followed me around holding a tray while I selected the items I wanted that morning.
The airbnb hosts of the home we rented in La Fortuna provided us with a 20 page guide filled with information about things we might want to do, restaurants they recommended, where to buy groceries, where to get cash, and other tidbits of information to helps us experience all the town had to offer.
You cannot step foot into Costa Rica without hearing the phrase “pura vida”. It’s spoken everywhere, by everyone, all across the country. It means pure life and I cannot think of a better way to it encapsulate Costa Rican culture.
The location!
Maybe the people are so friendly because it’s impossible to not be happy when you live in a place that looks like this.
The country is located in a mountainous area with the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Caribbean Sea on the other. The country is smaller than the state of West Virginia but includes 200 volcanoes, mountains that ascend into the clouds, creating a literal cloud forest, 800 miles of coastline, six different kinds of rain forests, swamps, wetlands, rivers, lakes, and over 400 waterfalls.
It doesn’t actually matter where you choose to go in Costa Rica. It’s all beautiful.
The food!
We had so much good food in Costa Rica. I think you’d have to really work at it to not eat exceptionally well while visiting there. Everywhere you turn there are many different kinds of restaurants, markets, and sodas - small, local Costa Rican restaurants that serves only traditional Costa Rican food. And almost all of it is good.
In the rest of this issue, you’ll find 11 recipes that I recreated from the memory of meals we enjoyed on this last trip but there very well might be more to come in future issues because we enjoyed many memorable meals. Like this one in San Jose - a restaurant in a hole-in-the-wall building in a non-descript neighborhood that had transformed the inside of the tiny building into a lush oasis and served us an incredible seafood lunch.
There are not very many places that change the way we eat on a day-to-day basis, but Costa Rica has done that. I never truly appreciated the delicious, satisfying simplicity of well seasoned, flavorful rice and beans and a stack of warm homemade corn tortillas but since we’ve returned there’s been some in our refrigerator at all times. (Both recipes are included below.)
After seeing yucca in the supermarket for years, I finally started cooking with it and I’m pretty sure savory yucca and sweet potato cakes are well on their way to becoming normal lunch fare around here. (Recipe below)
For those of you who’ve read The Blue Zones: Lessons From the Healthiest Places on Earth, you might remember that a community in Costa Rica is one of the places featured in the book. I read the book years ago and had forgotten about that but was so pleased to discover the Blue Zones Cookbook while we were there. I purchased a copy and it’s influence is represented in the recipes below. (I’ll also be sharing recipes from the book next month.)
Costa Rica, we ❤️ you and we hope to see you again soon.
And regardless of whether you’ve been there before or haven’t yet had the opportunity, I hope a trip to Costa Rica is in your future.
What to eat this week
Saint Patrick’s Day is tomorrow, which means we are eating corned beef and cabbage with mustard sauce and parsley buttered potatoes and Irish apple cake, and I hope you are too because YUM.
I always make extra corned beef so we have enough left over for corned beef hash and reuben sandwiches later in the week. This recipe for corned beef hash is more of a basic formula for how to make hash with pretty much any kind of leftover meat or veggies. But, corned beef and potatoes is my favorite.
And this recipe for reuben sandwiches is made with toasted slices of dark rye bread packed with corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and tangy homemade Russian dressing. They are overstuffed, messy and sloppy, and dripping with sauce and cheese, as all good sandwiches should be.
Just a reminder that Irish Apple Cake is this month’s bake club challenge recipe, so if you make it, be sure to leave a comment on the recipe so you’ll be entered into the drawing for a $50 Amazon gift card.
To participate in the Bake Club Challenge: bake an Irish apple cake, and then leave a comment on the recipe telling me what you thought of it! By commenting on the recipe, you'll be automatically entered to win a $50 Amazon gift card. Bake the challenge recipe and leave your comment before April 1st, 2024.
Recipes with frozen berries
We are so close to fresh berry season and I am giddy with anticipation. And honestly, it’s fine because until then we have frozen berries. If you’re getting as antsy for spring as I am, perhaps a couple of these bright, fresh, berry recipes are exactly what you need.
#1. Easy berry sauce: It doesn't get any easier than this 10-minute berry sauce. Use whatever kind or combination of berries you like, fresh or frozen, to make this delicious dessert sauce that's bursting with the flavor of ripe, juicy berries.
My favorite things to cover with berry sauce are chocolate ricotta cake, vanilla loaf cake, and buttermilk pancakes.
#2. Berry Cobbler: The fruit filling in this cobbler is slightly tart, not too sweet, and super saucy and the topping is soft, tender, and chewy like the very best kind of sugar cookie. It's equally delicious with fresh or frozen berries and the whole thing takes about 10 minutes to throw together before baking.
#3. Raspberry muffins: rich, decadent, and buttery little breakfast pastries packed with berries. The crumb is exceptionally soft and tender, a perfect match for delicate, sweet raspberries. And the butter crumb topping literally melts in your mouth.
More frozen raspberry treats:
More frozen berry recipes:
Beans and rice (Gallo pinto)
—> FREE EMAIL BONUS: How to turn a pot of beans into a week of dinners
Beans and rice are as essential to traditional Costa Rican food as butter is to French cuisine. In many parts of the country, it is eaten at every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So, this is where we begin, with a simple pot of beans and rice that is, in fact, delicious enough to eat every day.
You’ll find variations of beans and rice all across Costa Rica, but the basic idea is the same. In most cases, the rice is cooked separately then added to a skillet of sautéed garlic and onions along with black beans. In this recipe, I’ve cooked everything in the same pot.
Ingredients
1 cup rice - long grain white rice is traditional, but you can use any kind of rice you like
2 tablespoons vegetable, canola, or extra virgin olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and diced
1 red bell pepper, seeds and stem removed and diced
2-4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 cups water or broth (I used water mixed with Better than Bouillon Vegetable Base)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon tomato paste (optional)
1 1/2 cups black beans - this is the amount in a 15 ounce can of black beans, or here’s how to cook dried black beans
Salt and pepper to taste
For serving (optional): sliced avocado, hot sauce, chopped fresh cilantro, diced tomatoes, and pickled onions (Pickled onions are not traditional to Costa Rican cuisine at all, we just really like them on there, especially when eating beans and rice on a warm tortilla like a taco.)
Instructions:
Add the rice to a fine mesh strainer and rinse it under cold water until the water runs clear.
Add the oil, diced onion, red pepper, and garlic to a large saucepan or braiser. Set the pan over medium heat and cook until the vegetables are beginning to soften and the onions are starting to look translucent, about 2-3 minutes. Add the rice and cook, stirring, for another minute or two.
Stir in the water or broth, Worcestershire sauce, and tomato paste and turn the heat up to high. When the liquid begins to boil, turn the heat to low, cover the pan, and cook until the rice is tender, about 20 minutes.
Stir in the beans and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve as is or with any or all of the suggested toppings.
Homemade corn tortillas (Nixtamal tortillas)
Nixtamel refers to corn that has been soaked and partially cooked with lime (or wood ash). The lime or ash releases the niacin in corn which is good for us and good for digestion. Ancient Aztecs discovered this benefit from grinding their corn against limestone thousands of years ago.
Like homemade flour tortillas, homemade corn tortillas are incomparably better to the packaged store-bought variety. They are also very easy to make. And I know, I know some of you are rolling your eyes and thinking, sure they are - but they require nothing more than mixing 4 ingredients into a dough, pressing them into tortillas and cooking them for a few seconds in a hot skillet.
So yes, opening a package of tortillas is easier. But in exchange for a few minutes more, you can have warm, soft, homemade tortillas that are just so much better.
Having just told you how easy these are to make I feel I should confess that until our recent trip to Costa Rica, it had been years since I’ve made them. I make homemade flour tortillas frequently and used to also make corn tortillas. But then I got lazy and started buying them and forgot how much better they are freshly made and hot from the skillet. Now I remember. And, once again, I’m not sure I can ever go back.
1 cup masa harina (I like Bob’s Red Mill masa harina)
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt (more to taste)
3/4 cup warm tap water
Add the masa harina, baking soda, and salt to a bowl and stir with a wire whisk to combine. Add the water and mix until a soft dough forms. If the dough is too dry to form a ball, add more water, a little bit at a time, until you can press the dough into a ball. Wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for 5 minutes.
Unwrap the dough and knead it for a minute or two. It should be the consistency of play-dough. If it feels dry and crumbly, sprinkle more water over the dough and knead to incorporate. If it’s wet and sticky, sprinkle it with more masa harina.
Divide the dough into 8 balls of equal size. Cover the balls with plastic wrap so you can work with one ball at a time and they won’t dry out.
Place one ball of dough in between two pieces of wax paper and press it into a disk. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a round, thin tortilla. Alternatively, use a tortilla press to press the dough in between two pieces of wax paper into a tortilla.
Stack the raw tortillas with pieces of wax paper in between them. When they are all rolled out, set a skillet over medium-high heat. When the skillet is hot enough for a drop of water to skip across the bottom of the pan and evaporate, add the first tortilla.
Cook for about 10 to 15 seconds then flip it over and let it cook until the edges are dry, another 20-30 seconds. Flip the tortilla over again and press it down into the pan with a flat spatula to encourage puffing. Cook for another 10 seconds, until brown spots appear over the bottom then flip it once more, press with the spatula, and cook until brown spots appear on the other side.
Remove the tortilla from the skillet and repeat with the remaining dough.
I like to place the tortillas in a tortilla warmer pouch as they come off the skillet which will keep them warm and soft for quite some time - an hour or longer.
The rest of this issue, which includes 9 more recipes inspired by our recent trip to Costa Rica, is for paid subscribers. Subscribe now for just $5 a month or $50 a year. ❤️
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