Growing up I only heard chancelta refer to a shoe that my mom used to wear around the house to clean, very similar to a slipper. When my host mom initially served me the dish and called it a chancleta I was very confused. She then explained that it is just a silly name for the dish. Typically the chancleta is eaten for lunch or dinner and my host mom serves it with a side of rice.
The other dish I will be talking about is the empanada de chiverre which is served as either dessert or breakfast. Costa Ricans will bake these treats together as a family during Semana Santa (saint week) which has just recently passed. I have been able to see the labor intensive journey of making these delicious desserts first hand.
The chancleta is a mix of sweet and savory ingredients that blend perfectly together. When I tried the chancleta for the first time it was also the first time I was introduced to the vegetable chayote. The vegetable itself was so delicious as I had never tasted anything like it before. It is mostly similar to the taste of squash and cucumber. After eating it for the first time, I have had it in some sort of variation every week, either in soups, it by itself and salt steamed, or baked and it has definitely become one of my new favorite veggies.
I have also never had chiverre before but when I had the dessert it tasted like a pumpkin and honey mix. The fruit of the chiverre is also in the squash family, but it is much larger. A good comparison would be a mix of the pumpkin size and stem features and the watermelon pattern and colors.
