By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 8, 2008

An occasional series in which staff members share a recipe that we turn to time and again.

After studying Spanish for five straight hours every day in Antigua, Guatemala, this past summer, I was always starving. When classes let out, at 1 p.m., I was grateful not only that the midday meal is the biggest one of the day in Central America but also that Patti, the housekeeper for the family with whom I was staying, was a great cook.

She produced a few clunkers, such as spaghetti noodles with vegetables and a weird ketchup sauce. But most of the time she cooked savory Guatemalan dishes such as hilachas (shredded beef in a tomatillo sauce) and pepian de pollo (thick chunks of chicken in a rich and spicy dark-brown sauce).

I asked her for details. Like most great cooks, she was too casual and vague for my recipe-dependent cooking skills.

I scribbled down the list of ingredients she called out. But when I asked for measurements, she would say cryptic things such as, "Calculate the amount of chili [peppers] you use carefully."

But how much? What kind?

One day, wandering the city's cobblestone streets with a growling stomach, I found just what I needed: the Antigua Cooking School. Militza de Leon teaches in English and Spanish to people like me, who love good food, would love to know how to cook it but need specific operating instructions to make that happen. For $50, I got de Leon almost to myself.

My Spanish teacher was happy that I learned useful words such as hervir (boil) and saltear (saute). I was happy to learn the ways of subanik.

It is a ceremonial dish from the Guatemalan highlands, often served as piquant soup or stew of chicken and beef (or pork, turkey or lamb) in a smoky sauce of roasted vegetables and chili peppers. It is called "God's meal," according to some accounts. I think it's heavenly.

Made the traditional way in Mayan villages, subanik takes hours of preparation: Entire cuts of raw meat on the bone are steamed in the roasted vegetable sauce. Enormous, fanlike mashan leaves, like banana leaves only bigger and emerald green, are artfully arranged inside a clay pot, like a nest. Then the subanik is ladled inside. The leaves are tied at the top, and water is poured into the pot around the outside of the leaves.

In the old days, the mixture would be placed over an outside fire or buried in a fire pit in the earth to steam for hours. These days, de Leon and other modern Guatemalans steam the mixture on the stove top. Thankfully, de Leon has further modified the traditional recipe to suit modern lives. She showed us how to sear cubes of boneless meat in a frying pan before steaming them in the sauce, a step that takes only 20 minutes. De Leon ties the leaves with a piece of cibaque or raffia, braiding the ends, for a gorgeous presentation. (See a photo of a subanik crock at http://www.antiguacookingschool.com, under Menus.)

Her recipe has exact measurements. But, like Patti, she advises adding the chili peppers a little at a time, tasting until the sauce reaches the highest heat level you can stand.

She has other modifications for gringos, too. After I came back to Washington, I spent the better part of a morning calling Latin grocery stores in the area, asking for mashan leaves. Carlos Castro, who owns Todos Market, an international grocery store in Manassas, had to call his sister in Guatemala before reporting back that no one sells mashan leaves here. Guatemala doesn't export them. And calls to the two Guatemalan restaurants in the area -- Corado's in Mount Pleasant and La Bamba in Silver Spring -- yielded nothing. They don't even make subanik.

No worries, de Leon answered when I e-mailed her. Her advice was to use a Dutch oven and plantain or banana leaves for presentation only, arranging them fanlike around the inside of a serving bowl. The subanik could be ladled from inside its nest of leaves.

Pressed for time after work one night, I left the banana leaves I'd bought in the freezer to use another day and borrowed a friend's cast-iron Dutch oven. I did set off the smoke alarm roasting all the vegetables, and I used the chili peppers sparingly to entice my kids to eat the dish. I served the subanik with white rice and escabeche, or blanched vegetables in a mustard and vinegar sauce. Thumbs up, all around.

A few days later, I served the leftovers to friends who were over for an informal dinner. The subanik's flavors had deepened in the fridge, as those of good stews and briskets do.

When the meal was over, one guest asked if she could lick the pot. I'd call that recipe a keeper.

Brigid Schulte is a staff writer for the Metro section.