3 African Countries, yet we find ourselves back in the Americas - Costa Rica Here We Come

After Colombia, we found ourselves heading back to the African island of Comoros in our search for pancakes.  Unfortunately, we didn't find any pancakes for Comoros.  After Comoros our journey took us to Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, again, we didn't find any pancakes.  Next comes Republic of the Congo, and once again we had no luck finding pancakes.  Of all of the countries we've traveled to for pancakes so far, the most difficult ones to find pancakes in have been in Africa so far.

Now we head back to the Americas, Central America to be exact, as we begin our trip to Costa Rica.  It was relatively easy to find a pancake recipe for Costa Rica.  We discovered that Costa Ricans call their pancakes chorreadas, and they are primarily made from corn.  Without further discourse, here is what you will need to make chorreadas:

4 cups of fresh corn
1/4 cup of milk
4 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon of salt
oil for frying

To get 4 cups of fresh corn, we needed about 5 pieces of corn on the cob.


Remove the husks from the corn, and wash each ear.  Then cut the corn from the cob with a chef's knife.


After you've cut the corn from the cob, add all of the ingredients (except for the oil) to a food processor.


Pulse the food processor until you have a smooth batter.


Once you have a smooth batter, you'll need to heat some oil in a skillet.  The recipe I was using said to use a cast iron skillet, but given how thin and liquidy the batter was, I was skeptical to use a cast iron skillet, but I gave it a try in the cast iron skillet anyway.  Here are the results:



Just as I expected, the batter was too delicate to be able to get it off of the cast iron skillet and flip the pancake.  We switched to a nonstick frying pan instead.



The above pictures shows 2 tablespoons of the batter spread around until you have a thin pancake.  It should be about as thin as a crepe would be.  Let the pancake cook on one side until it begins to turn golden brown around the edges.


Once it turns golden brown, flip the pancake and cook on the other side for about two more minutes.  Be careful as you flip this, because it is quite delicate.



Remove the pancake from the heat when it's done, and place it under a clean towel or in a warm oven.  Continue cooking until all of the batter is used up.  You will need to add oil to the pan after each pancake is cooked.

We decided to add some protein in the form of Costa Rican gallo pinto (black beans and rice).  If you'd like the recipe for it, go here.

These were absolutely delicious!  I am glad I didn't use the entire batter up and make all of them, because if I had, I don't think I would have been able to stop eating them!



Enjoy!

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