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Fanesca

Fanesca

Festival

The HOLY WEEK soup, and the most elaborate dish in Ecuadorian cooking. TWELVE GRAINS AND LEGUMES — the usual reading is the twelve apostles, though that gloss is a tradition rather than a documented origin — in a base of milk, squash (zapallo and sambo) and peanut, with BACALAO, salt cod, standing in for the meat that Lent forbids. Garnished with fried plantain, hard-boiled egg, empanaditas, parsley and chilli. ⚠ NO TWO HOUSEHOLDS AGREE ON THE TWELVE and no list is recorded here as definitive; chocho, poroto, arveja, choclo, lenteja, haba, melloco, quinoa, garbanzo, frijol, mote and arroz all appear. ⚠ THE DISH IS PLAINLY SYNCRETIC — an Andean harvest soup of the grains available at that point in the agricultural year, wrapped in a Catholic calendar — and both halves are recorded.

Atlas — where and when

Communities and languages

Languages: Spanish

What is recorded

  • Fanesca is recorded as a syncretic dish: an Andean soup of the grains and legumes available at that point in the agricultural year, framed by the Catholic Lenten prohibition on meat and the Iberian use of salt cod. The reading of the twelve grains as the twelve apostles is a traditional account and is not documented as its origin. No single ingredient list is recorded as definitive. probable

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to Spanish Foodways documented

    The Lenten salt-cod frame is Iberian and Catholic; the twelve grains and the squash-and-peanut base are Andean.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.