At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala (2016)

Nicaragua

Jennifer Moran

SOPA DE PESCADO

Tucked away deep in the barrio in the capital city of Managua, a huge aluminum pot bubbles with rich sustenance—an amalgamation of water, fire, agriculture, transportation, hunting, trade, cooperation, cooking skills, and traditions: sopa de pescado.

As the sun rises behind their backs, men with nets quietly haul in fish on the beaches of the Pacific. Along the rivers, men are busy with harpoons and poles. Some of the bounty from the waters will end up on their tables; the rest will be carted to markets.

Farther inland, after hot cups of local coffee and before the Managua sun climbs high in the sky and simmers the city, Mami and her niece walk up the dirt road and wait for the bus to the market.

The bus pulls up and rushes to a stop. Mami climbs aboard with her niece and swipes her card across the scanner, and it takes away another 5 cordobas (about 20 cents) from the balance. It is standing room only on the bus, filled with mothers cradling babies, students with backpacks, police officers in blue uniforms, construction workers with buckets of tools, vendors, hawkers, shoppers, artists. This city bus, like others, is owned by its driver and is uniquely outfitted with tassels, decals, stenciled graphics, paintings, and fans. Velvet curtains are ready for the midday sun, and the little glass windows have been pushed open as much as possible. Ranchera music fills the tight, close air.

The women hang onto the bars overhead and gaze out the windows for the 20-minute, three-mile trek to the Mercado Oriental: the country’s largest, wildest, best-priced, and most popular and notoriously dangerous open-air market.

The bus stops, and the women push their way gently to the side door with a dozen other passengers. They step out onto the dusty, muddy, and colorful market streets. To the left: tires, toilets, and doors. To the right: tortillas, speakers, sprockets, hair clips, used clothes, shoes, Christmas lights, cobblers, vegetables, rice, fruit, flowers, and herbs. Beyond sight in every direction, the market continues as a vast labyrinth of passageways and shops, already brimming with people, music, and food even though it is still early morning.

Mami and her niece make their way toward the fish stands, stepping carefully over mud and rocks, concrete steps and rubbish, feet and tires. They’re sharing the passageways with throngs of people and the occasional wooden cart, pushed by men or pulled by horses, hauling vegetables or fruits from neighboring pueblos and departments near and far. Earlier, the fishermen similarly arrived with Mami’s savory mixto (seafood mixture).

Albala

A bowl of Nicaraguan fish soup, sopa de pescado, with the local catch of the day and market vegetables. (Courtesy of Jennifer Moran)

It is still cool out at 7:00 a.m., only about 78 degrees Fahrenheit, and the fish are fresh and firm. Vintage weight scales dangle here and there for the vendors’ use, and the scene is cast in a mix of shadow and light under a patchwork of new and rusty tin roof panels. The women act quickly, selecting fish with bright eyes, shimmering scales, and firm flesh. They move to the next stall, with shrimp, crabs, clams, and turtle eggs piled into little mountain ranges along the tables. Again Mami and her niece act quickly and leave with packages of freshwater and saltwater fish heads and filets as well as shrimp and crabs.

On the way out of the market, the women stop at a friend’s stand for carrots, tomatoes, celery, culantro (similar to cilantro in taste and use but with a broader dandelion-like leaf), onion, and green bananas. Everything they buy is packed into thin, colorful plastic bags, nicknamed the “flowers of Nicaragua” because they are so numerous and colorful and often end up peppering the streets, plants, and trees. The packages are placed into the women’s gigantic woven recycled plastic market bags, and everything is gently hauled through the market, back onto the bus, and down the dirt road home.

Managua is a city of dirt roads and developed highways, electronic club music and acoustic marimba-rich traditional sounds, aristocrats and barefoot peddlers, clapboard houses and vast estates, hunger and obesity, fresh whole foods falling from the trees, and fritangas (fried food stands) with everything dripping in grease. Back in barrio Jonathan Gonzales, children are playing in the street, kicking up dirt as they pass a soccer ball back and forth. Music pipes into the street from someone’s kitchen, while a woman pats tortillas into small disks at the tortilla shop next door.

Mami’s niece stops at the little pulpería (convenience store) across from their homes for cold milk, while Mami heads into her house with the fish and vegetables. The fish is placed in the fridge, and the veggies are placed on the table. A few hours flicker by, and family trickles in from down the path, next door, and across the city. Conversation naturally moves to hungry bellies, and Mami pulls together the ingredients: catfish, tilapia, crab, shrimp, sunfish, carrots, onions, celery, culantro, rice, green banana, tomato, salt, and a seasoning packet of Maggi de camarón (shrimp bouillon).

The rich fish stock starts with water piped into the neighborhood from the city’s freshwater lagoon. With a twist of a knob, the water flows from the house’s singular faucet into the huge aluminum pot and over the chopped onions and whole crabs that Mami has already added. This little faucet is used for cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, watering the cats and dogs and plants, and brewing coffee in the morning—all of the household’s needs. Mami walks back through the garden and breezeway with her pot of onions, crabs, and water.

She sets the pot on the new gas stove she bought and opens the valve on the tank. Gas is common and valued and is used with careful measure. Some homes still use wood or use both, as wood smoke is an important flavor component in traditional dishes such as frijoles cosidos (cooked red beans). A local utility delivers gas from a truck piled with tanks. Cooking wood is delivered by impoverished men, women, and children driving horse carts piled with bundles of wood from the countryside. Some of the cooking wood is grown for that purpose; some is gathered from streets, salvaged from landscaping work and storm waste; and some is sourced from the wild, a contributing factor in deforestation, droughts, and erosion in the region.

Flames lick the pot, and soon the stock is simmering. As a working grandmother in her 60s, Mami has been cooking like this for her family and for restaurants for many years. She moves swiftly, each movement productive and measured, with a smile on her face. Vegetables are chopped and tossed into the pot, water from a bucket is added, bony fish and fish heads are tossed in, rice is started in another pot, and those pretty green bananas are sliced and simmered in water in a third pan, next to the rice. In a few minutes, Mami will add more vegetables and tender fish, finishing with culantro, milk, and a pinch of salt just before serving.

Meanwhile out in the garden, music is playing, and the plantain trees sway in the breeze. When the weather is ideal, shared meals are often enjoyed outdoors in the garden between their houses, where there is ample space for everyone. Today is one of those days, and Mami’s son and grandson bring out tables and tablecloths of silk and lace. The sofa is covered in a cotton tapestry under the avocado tree. A niece brings out a bowl of spoons, and another niece brings out the first bowl of soup. Cats lick their lips and dogs wag their tails in the shade, in joyful anticipation of the fishy leftovers.

Mami explains that sopa de pescado is rich in nutrients such as calcium and phosphorous, good for the brain and for enhancing sex drive and fertility, increasing energy, sustaining general health, and healing those who are ill. Although not an everyday food for most Nicaraguans, fish is a favored source of sustenance and protein. It is enjoyed in many forms, from ceviche to grilled or fried whole fish to maiz (corn) and fish patties to sopa.

Mami’s son explains that at restaurants the price is marked up exponentially, but when the ingredients are bought at the market, the soup is much more economical. From market to table, the pot for a family of 7 or 8 costs about $5, or 127 cordobas. While pricier than the Nicaraguan staple gallo pinto (pan-fried rice and beans) and tortillas, it is affordable and typical for Mami’s middle-class family.

Because her family loves her sopa de pescado and because it is good for health and relatively economical to make, Mami prepares the soup almost every week or upon request. Mami’s family has a strong spirit of sharing their bounty, whether food or money. Work and a steady income are generally hard to come by in Nicaragua, and families often pool their resources. (Mami has worked washing and mending clothes and cooking since she was a teenager. Her nieces work at home and help maintain their homes. Her son has a business, painting and refinishing windows and doors, and he is often helped by his own 14-year-old son.)

The table is set: a bowl of rice to share among the group is placed on the table next to a bowl of sliced boiled green bananas. A niece serves cold glasses of refresco de cacao (a homemade chocolate milk made with cacao beans) or water or beer. One by one the bowls of sopa are brought out, each customized for the eater’s preferences: Crab or catfish? Tilapia or sunfish? Snapper or shrimp? As the bowls are brought out, the family begins to sip, slurp, and share the soup with gusto. Fish head? Crab claw? More culantro? Sprinkle of salt? Mami finally sits down and takes a sip herself. Everyone is together now. The family holds hands, forming a circle around the table. A niece offers a prayer as everyone gives thanks to God for the bounty, the meal, and their blessings, culminating with a quiet chorus of “Amen.”

Grace

Giving formal thanks at the table, usually to a higher power, is embedded in some cultures. We may be familiar with the practice among Christians in the West or among observant Jews who say a formal prayer before every meal, often specific to individual foods such as bread and wine. But in other cultures, recognizing God or the gods before eating is essential. In East Africa, pouring some drink onto the floor is a way of honoring the ancestral gods, and elsewhere a libation serves the same purpose. A sacrifice or offering is merely an extension of this practice, which in ancient times served to feed the gods but today can be an integral part of every meal.

The prayer is followed seamlessly by steel spoons clanking the ceramic bowls; fingers pulling tender fish flesh from bone; and hands, lips, and tongues working hard for precious crab meat, bites of juicy tomatoes and tender onions, and satisfying and sustaining bites of green bananas. The soup is savory and satisfying. The broth is light, with an element of velvety richness from the milk. A niece mentions that sometimes coconut milk is used in place of cow’s milk especially in the country, where the fish is pulled from the river and the coconuts are pulled from the trees. Bright bits of culantro add a grassy, herbal flavor. The onions are sweet and tender, and the sliced carrots have a soft heft to the bite. A spoonful of salty rice and a few slices of green banana add another dimension and texture to the soup, and the starch extends the meal. The table is mostly quiet as everyone focuses on eating and sharing today’s sopa.

As each bowl is finished, each family member steps up without ceremony and brings his or her bowl of bones to the singular sink, just behind today’s dining table in the dusty tropical garden. Instead of throwing the bones in the garbage, they are tossed to the whisker-licking cats, who are waiting nearby and dine like royalty on the tiny bits of fish and cartilage. Any veggies and pieces of fish without bones are tossed to the less graceful dogs, who might swallow the dangerous little fish bones whole. Some diners then wash their dishes, and some simply start a stack on the corrugated concrete basin. A niece lingers at the sink after she washes her bowl and briskly deconstructs the stack of dishes every time it starts with solid dish soap, a woven plastic cleaning cloth, and cold water from the tap. Before long the animated garden table is once again clean and quiet, ready for the next family meal.

Barriga Llena, Corazón Contento (Full Stomach, Content Heart)

Sopa de Pescado

Water

Assorted fish and seafood, such as catfish, tilapia, crab, shrimp, sunfish

Carrots, chopped

Onions, chopped

Celery, chopped, stalk and leaves

Culantro, chopped

Tomato, chopped

Milk or coconut milk

Salt

Seasoning packet of Maggi de camarón (any seafood bouillon can be used)

Rice, cooked

Green (unripe) banana, sliced and boiled tender

1.Chop onion and add to a large pot with crabs. Fill pot halfway with water and bring to a boil.

2.Add chopped carrots and celery and simmer for 15 minutes.

3.Add fish and tomatoes.

4.Add water to cover, and simmer for 15 minutes or until fish is cooked.

5.Finish with milk, culantro, Maggi, and salt to taste.

6.Serve in bowls with cooked rice and boiled sliced green bananas at the table as optional additions.