Family Recipe - Guatemalan Chuchitos

My Grandma cooks the best, best food, therefore my Mother makes the best food. I'm lucky that I barely cook any food. A while back I was having thoughts about death, not sure why...could have been the fact that I was watching Steel Magnolias. For some reason I thought if my Grams and my Mom passed I would never eat Chuchiots. I don't know how to make them. Then I thought same goes for tamales, Pollo en Crema, Hilachas, Carne Gizada...a bunch of other yummy dishes I grew up eating that I would never taste again. Hmm maybe I should worry that I lost my Grams and Mom and I think about food!

Sure I could probably google the recipe, but it would never be the same. I only want one way. The way my Mom, Grandma and the women before them made it. I want to make it the family way. So I contacted my cousins and asked if they would be interested in learning how to make all this stuff. They were very interested. Mom looked at me kinda weid but smiled and said OK. She probably is wondering what took so long for me to be interested.

Since it was the Chuchitos that started it all, that would be the first item we would learn to make. So what exactly is a Chuchito? Well, it's like a Mexican tamale really. Guatemalans have our own tamale that is larger and softer. Chuchitos are harder and small. They are usually wrapped in a way that resembles a big candy.

So over Labor Day weekend the learning/cooking would took place. My cousin Yuzema came over Sunday night and we were of to the grocery store with our ingredients list.

(lol my eyes were bloodshot in this pic so I attempeted to fix with photoshop...i look like i have neon white eyes!!)

Only problem was there were a few ingredients we could not find! So 1 1/2 hours, 3 calls home and 2 stores later we finally made it home with all the things we needed. The next morning it was time to prep and cook.

Yuzema came over again and we got to work. My Mom found it funny that we were having such a hard time with what just came natural and easy to her. To make things worse we realized that there was no actual "recipe". Almost everything was measured based on how it tasted or looked or felt. So we had to learn those "measurements" by heart.  First you make the maza. Man...it's no joke. We really had to put in some shoulder work on this one. Work it Yuz! We labored over Labor Day... lol... alright so I was the only one that found that funny...

After we "tasted" and "felt" the consistency of the maza to our liking, it was done!

Tada! Now on to the sauce! Mom litterlary told me a different number of tomatoes like 3 times...

We had some technical difficulties with the blender but we got it to work

My cousin Doris came over right in time to learn how to assemble them. Now they usually are wrapped a little differently, remember, like the candy look. But since we were making so many it was just easier to wrap them like tamales. Doris and her belly --> aka Isabella, joined in on the assembly line.

We were very proud of ourselves when we finally figured out how to wrap them. Look at the concentration level needed here. The degree of techinicallity difficulty and the...ok so it's not the Olympics but this is major for us.

Finally we were done wrapping and they were ready to be cooked. High fives were spread all over the kitchen, hugs and tears of joy were shed...ok so only in my head but the high fives were real.

I was then left alone in the house and instructed to turn off the fire after two hours. Two hours later while inspecting one of the Chuchitos, it looked very slimy to me. Like that maza was not done cooking. So I decided to let them cook a little longer...The one part where there were specific instructions and I decide I know better.

Turns out they are so hot that even after you turn of the fire they are still cooking and once they cool the maza hardens. So our batch turned out a little overcooked but just slightly. They were still really, really good!! My mouth is drooling over this...

I think we made Mom and Grandma proud with these. We ended up making like 50 and they were gone in like 2 days. We definitely learned that most of the recipes we will attempt to learn we will have to perfect with time and practice as there are no measurements involved. It's like an art. I wont post the "recipe" here because well, it's a FAMILY recipe. You don't give the secrets away. But I have decided to put them all in a book and give them to my cousins so we can make them for our children and one day our grandchildren will say...Man Grandma makes the best, best food!

Love Always,

the Sea & Sol