Matanza

My community is very agricultural – everyone here pretty much has cattle and grows their own crops.  So every once in a while, whether to celebrate an event or just to have an excuse for everyone to get together, a family will have a matanza, which is where they kill a cow early in the morning, spend the day butchering the cow and preparing the meat, and invite their family (which is typically a lot of people) to come eat all day and drink.  This weekend was my first matanza, and we ate a lot of beef.  I helped out a lot and took a lot of photos.  They were pretty excited that I wanted to learn and kept telling me that I will cook Panamanian food when I go back to the States and told me to take pictures of everything to show you all.

  

              Friday a lot of people in my family got together to prepare by making bollos (pronounced boyos).  To make a bollo you first boil and then ground corn, mix/knead it with water and butter, form it into a little hot-dog shape, wrap it in sugar cane leaves, and put it in a pot to boil.  They then save the cooked bollos for the next morning to eat with breakfast.

Saturday morning, they killed the cow at 4am (I was still asleep), and when I arrived at 8:30 they had already butchered the majority of the cow and were dividing the different cuts of meat into bowls: some meat to salt and dry, some meat to grill, bones for soup, and the unwanted cuts for the dogs.  They also boil the intestines, or mondongo, and eat it fried or with a sauce.

They also wanted me to take a picture of the head and the legs, which they had set aside on the roof until they were ready to take care of it.

 

They put the heart, in the fridge, but since they don’t have room to put the majority of the meat in the fridge, they salt and smoke a lot of the meat so it won’t go back.  They hang it out like clothes on a clothes line

 

 

 

The menu for the day was:

For breakfast: liver with bollos and boiled yucca

For lunch: beef soup with squash, yams and rice

 

 For dinner: carne asada (which they had cut into thin slices and let marinate in BBQ sauce for the majority of the day before grilling), boiled yucca, bollos, and arroz con carne (rice cooked with veggies and beef).  They use banana leaves to cover the pot and keep the steam in and cook the rice, cabbage, carrots, onions and sweet pepper.