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From the Andes to the Pacific coast, communities across Ecuador are busy bringing their ancestral culture into the 21st century. All over the country, they've set up projects to preserve elements of their identity, be it food, traditions or the nature around them - and have achieved this goal by opening their doors to travellers

- SARAH GILLESPIE

CUISINE

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

In the Manabí province on the country's Pacific coast, ICHE, a food school and restaurant, is passing down ancient culinary traditions to a new generation of Ecuadorian chefs and curious diners

Valentina Alvarez is a woman in constant motion. “Here — try it. Taste it; it’s sweet.” She presses a sticky, powdery clump into my hand, and I do as requested. It tastes fruity, salty and earthy all at the same time. I’m chewing on plantain dipped in salprieta, a condiment of ground annatto seeds with chillies, peanuts and corn — three of the four culinary pillars of Manabí, a province on Ecuador’s Pacific coast.

Valentina is now busy squashing the fourth one, cassava, into balls of dough. A firm, stubby root vegetable, it comes in endless permutations in Ecuador; here at ICHE, a restaurant, culinary school and food development lab just north of the town of San Vicente, it will become pan de yuca, marble-sized bread rolls. She bakes them in a manabita oven, a hemispherical clay pit topped by a removable grill, and throws in dried yellow corn, where it jumps and sputters. When the oven grill’s removed, it can be used like a tandoor; with it, it’s a stove. Valentina claims it has more than 14 other uses, including smoking, slow-cooking, dehydrating and fermenting — as well as drying clothes.

The use of this ancestral type of oven from Manabí province is just one of many culinary traditions that ICHE aims to both preserve and build on, teaching the students of its on-site culinary school age-old techniques while redefining what’s possible with homegrown food. All ingredients come from within a 20-mile radius of the property — many from its own herb garden.