It's Cuaresma (Lent)

[gulfporter]

My favorite Torta Ahogada place in town adds a shrimp torta during Cuaresma (Lent).  For the uninitiated the name means, Drowned Sandwich.  It comes on a super dry bolillo baked specifically for this sandwich.  You get separate bags of a sauce, super hot sauce (so hot my husband doesn't add any of it), pickled onions and diced zucchini.  You stuff the pickled items in the sandwich then drown it in the sauce.  The bread loosens up.....provecho!  

 

I eat mine more like a slow French Dip so I can control the bread's mushiness (for lack of a better word); I like a bit of bite and chew all the way thru to the end.  

 

Lent isn't as strict here as it was just 10 years ago.  Growing up in a Lithuanian immigrant Catholic family in the 50s and 60s, Lent was very strict.  No meat any day of the week.  We were poor so most Lenten meals were potato pancakes, mac n cheese and cheese and/or potato pierogies my grandmother made.  

 

 

 

[gulfporter]

Forgot to mention that on Fridays (pay days) my Dad would either bring home a plain pizza or some freshly fried (real) fish sticks from a seafood  market.  He made a powerful cocktail sauce of half ketchup and half homemade horseradish.  My grandmother made her own horseradish and it had beet juice (or crushed beets??) in it and was bright red.  

 

To this day when I buy 'white' horseradish, it doesn't look right to me.  

 

Anyone else with Lenten food memories??