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Recipe: Simple huancaína sauce
This is the quintessential Peruvian sauce, originally the main ingredient of papa a la huancaína (Huancayo-style potato), but nowadays used as a sauce to serve alongside pretty much anything. I like to serve it with cassava chips, made by boiling frozen cassava and then frying it in butter. The original recipe has the following ingredients: ají amarillo (Peruvian yellow chilli), queso fresco (Peruvian feta cheese), evaporated milk and soda crackers. I used to sautée the chillies with onion and garlic but this is optional. I now omit the crackers to make it gluten-free and lower carb and use ají amarillo paste because I can’t find fresh ones in Sydney. Also,…
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Recipe: Ensalada de palmitos y palta (hearts of palm and avocado salad)
I make variations of this ensalada de palmitos y palta every time I cook a Peruvian-themed meal. What makes it Peruvian? The avocado, palmitos, botija olives and the fact that is seasoned with lime juice and olive oil. Serve as a side for pretty much anything.
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Recipe: Peruvian ceviche
Classic Peruvian ceviche (cebiche or seviche are the proper spellings that nobody uses anymore) consists of 4 ingredients: fish, lime juice, onions and chillies. It is normally served with sweet potato and choclo (Peruvian white corn). Less common accompaniments include potato, yuca (cassava), yuyo (seaweed), rice (!). Cancha is normally served as a snack, although some restaurants serve some as part of the dish. Buen provecho!
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Product review: Macro Natural Nut Mix
Woolies has recently launched a snack pack called Macro Natural Nut Mix. The bag contains 5 single-serve packs 5 and costs $3.99, making a convenient and reasonably-priced snack. Sadly, convenience also means extra packaging. Each pack contains 30g of nuts (almonds, blanched peanuts, walnuts and cashews), which is the recommended serving size in the Australian Dietary Guidelines. Note that the nuts are either raw or blanched and unsalted, making them healthier than the roasted and/or flavoured varieties. Nuts contain healthy fats (mainly monounsaturated and some polyunsaturated fatty acids), as well as some protein and fibre. They also contain appreciable amounts of micronutrients such as vitamin E, folate, magnesium, calcium, and…
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Recipe: Ají de atún with lupin flakes
Ají de atún is a lesser-known version of the traditional Peruvian chicken stew ají de gallina. It uses canned tuna instead of chicken, which makes it cheaper and easier to prepare. This dish was in semi-regular rotation at my aunties’ so I assumed it was fairly common, but it turns out Alvaro had never heard of it. I haven’t asked where they got the recipe from but I bet it came from the Nicolini cookbook. Ají de atún is normally made with white sandwich bread and evaporated milk. I could have used gluten-free bread but decided to go one step further and make the dish more nutritious by using lupin…
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Product review: San Remo pulse pasta
I came across San Remo pulse pasta at the Gluten Free Expo a few weeks ago. Even though I very rarely eat pasta (in fact I never buy or cook it because I prefer using vegetables as the vehicle for sauces), these caught my eye because they are not just an empty source of refined carbohydrate, but actually pack some nutrition. Because they are only or mostly made from pulses, they are higher in protein, lower in carbs and higher in fibre than regular pasta. They come in three shapes: spaghetti, penne and fusilli. The spaghetti and penne are made out of equal parts of pea, chickpea, borlotti bean and…
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Recipe: Tallarines verdes (Peruvian pesto pasta)
This is a revised version of the tallarines verdes recipe I posted several years ago. What’s the difference? This recipe is closer to my aunties’ recipe and features gluten-free pasta. Like tallarines blancos, this dish was in rotation at my aunties’. The difference is that for a long period of time I didn’t like the pesto sauce but loved the white sauce. My uncle was the opposite, so on pasta day only one of us was happy. Obviously, I grew out of my pesto aversion and now love it. Once again, I didn’t get to ask my auntie Sumi for the original recipe before she passed away. I have tweaked…
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Recipe: Tallarines blancos con atún (pasta with white sauce and tuna)
Tallarines blancos con atún is one of the dishes that were in rotation at my aunties’ but I never got sick of it. In fact, it was one of my favourites. Sadly, I never got the original recipe from auntie Sumi. This is my best attempt to approximate the dish using my taste memory and the current family recipe.
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Recipe: Tallarín saltado de pollo (Peruvian stir-fried noodles with chicken)
Let me introduce you to lomo saltado‘s cousin, tallarín saltado de pollo. Both dishes came to life thanks to the fusion that happened due to the large influx of Cantonese people in Perú between mid 1800s and early 1900s. They share the same core ingredients: beef, tomato, red onion, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, with the main difference being the starch: rice and potato chips in the case of lomo saltado and noodles in the case of tallarín saltado. Yes, I know I said one of the core ingredients of tallarín saltado is beef, but this recipe has chicken in it. This is a fairly common variant and is the one…
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Product review: Maggie recipe bases
Before you declare I have sold my soul to Big Food, let me throw in a disclaimer: I have received multiple free samples of these recipe bases in a couple of events and I’m an advocate of making good use of free food. Not all Maggie’s recipe bases are gluten free, but of course I tried the ones that are. All of them make 4 servings and need a few basic ingredients added in. Once again, gluten free does not automatically makes a food product healthy. Some of the bases have ingredients I normally avoid such as “vegetable fat (vegetable fat, rosemary extract, sunflower lecithin)”, “flavours” and sugar. All of…
