More Cuenca mercados and picking the winners
Author’s note: This is the last of a four-part series about how an expat with no culinary credentials somehow found himself judging one of Cuenca’s most beloved traditional. It’s also a story about the generosity of strangers and the adventures that begin when you simply decide to see what might happen next.
By James Li
The rest of the day continued in the same vein. In something like four hours, we managed to visit eight of Cuenca’s mercados, which was two more than any of my prior attempts at tallying their total number. In and out of streets big and small, we zipped up to a handy offload spot, tumbled out en masse, navigated the stairs, corridors and passageways of each mercado, then slurped our way through more plates of papas con cuero. After El Arenal, I noticed that, except for the spitting out part, everyone in our group aside from me was tasting their plates like professional winetasters. My wife, a vegetarian with a generous heart, was given extra hard-boiled eggs in lieu of the pork fat that constituted the defining feature of the dish. In the end, she ate five or six eggs, and about a gallon of potatoes and mote.
Already full from my first full plate and stuffed after the second, I backed down to half a plate or so for the remaining six mercados. Late in the afternoon at our final stop, we were ushered into a secret director’s office in the top corner of the 3 de Noviembre Mercado. A woman offered us tea, coffee or juice. At that point, a single sip of anything would have led me to explode. I declined politely. Everyone else accepted.
Sitting or standing in the room were four women, all Cuencanas. I looked around and wondered where all the men had gone. An animated conversation in rapid Spanish ensued among the Cuencanas, led by a woman who I later learned was the vice-mayor of Cuenca. Sitting next to me, an older woman in a formal chef’s uniform turned and introduced herself to me as Patricia. I later learned she was the city’s chief culinary expert and ran the 1,200-student four-year gastronomy college at the University of Cuenca.
After a flurry of conversation, the women turned toward me in unison. The vice-mayor asked, in much slower Spanish, “And how do you vote, James”?
Until that moment, I didn’t believe I served any true role aside from appreciating the platters of good food that I’d been fed. But apparently, I’d been brought along for more than the ride. As an outsider, a foreigner, an expat and sole male in the room, I felt totally unqualified to judge which of the dueñas cooked the best version of papas con cuero, that signature dish built around pork skin and fat.
Truthfully, however, I’d loved eating each of the entrees by the eight women who made the finals. I recalled each of them distinctly. And so, in my basic but considered Spanish, I recalled each individual woman and what I liked best about her version of papas con cuero. My three favorites were penciled onto the voting sheet next to the votes from the three women in our group who were actually qualified judges. It turned out that everyone else in the van had been along for fun, for logistics, for media coverage and for moral support. I was relieved to see that the four of us, the three real judges and not-so-much me, unanimously agreed on the three winners.
A knock came at the door. One of the many men who had shared the van with us peeked inside. “Es hora,” he announced. Inside, we stood up together and walked down a corridor that led to the awards stage. All of the women marched onto the stage. I grabbed my wife’s hand, ducked left, and took seats with the audience. Walking toward the back, I recognized all eight of the women from the mercados in the audience, each sitting with family and friends. As the only two gringos in a crowd of hundreds, we stuck out like grains of white rice in a pepper shaker. This turned out to be a good thing, as every one of the cooks waved and smiled at us as we walked to our seats. I waved and tipped my hat back at them all.
In the grandest Ecuadorian style, the speeches began. “¡Gracias a todas y todos!” The audience clapped and cheered. The vice-mayor, an enthusiastic well-spoken gravelly-voiced young woman, gave a rousing impromptu speech. Patricia, Cuenca’s chef, gave the keynote address, stating truthfully that all of the cooks were winners. She then announced the three we’d chosen. The first and second place winners, María from 12 de Abril Mercado, and Elvia from El Arenal, happened to share the same last name. Amazingly, we learned they were sisters who decades earlier had decided to open stalls to cook at mercados far across town from each other. They stood next to each other now, smiling at each other and over the crowd.
Hand in hand, totally content with full bellies, we left the celebration as music and dancing continued, walked down the open metal stairs to the street and ambled home. It had been a fine day in a fine city in a part of the world where goodness comes naturally. In the humble words of another someone who elevated rice and beans to the world, that day was one simply “better than we deserved.”
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James Li is an emergency physician and incurably curious wanderer who has lived and worked in Africa and authored dozens of medical research articles in journals such as The Lancet and Chest. He also served as an editor for Annals of Emergency Medicine and is the author of Anesthesia Off the Grid. Together with his wife, he has spent years exploring Cuenca’s markets, traditional foods and neighborhood restaurants. What began as a personal attempt to keep track of favorite meals eventually became ¡Cuenca Eats!, an affectionate and deeply personal look at the culinary life of Cuenca through the eyes of a perpetually fascinated outsider who still finds himself happily surprised by where a good meal can lead. Buy it in Cuenca at Carolina Bookstore, the tourism office at Parque Calderón or on Amazon.
