Holy Week Stall · Candied Squash Empanada
Empanadas de Chiverre
Photo: Aleat88 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Cooked chiverre flesh separates into long, translucent strands much like spaghetti squash, which gives the candied filling its stringy texture.
A large fig-leaf gourd squash is candied slowly in raw cane syrup with spices, then folded inside a sweet pastry dough and baked until golden. Vendors around Cartago's Basílica de los Ángeles sell them especially during Holy Week.
Why it's made this way: Cartago, Costa Rica's former colonial capital and its center of religious pilgrimage, has kept the empanada as a signature treat of its Easter street-food tradition.
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