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Recipe: Speck, beef & mushrooms
No fancy story behind this dish. I was browsing Feather and Bone‘s weekly list to order meat and noticed they had speck ends for cooking. They are cheaper than bacon and ham, and come from the same top-quality piggies. Mega win.
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Recipe: Carapulcra (Peruvian pork and potato stew)
This is very weird. I have hated this dish for most of my life. My mum and aunties are so nice that they actually cooked a different dish for me whenever they made carapulcra. When I went to cooking school my friends really trusted my palate and made me test their version before presenting them to the instructor for marking. I knew they were really well made but I still hated them. Last year Alvaro, Gladys, Vicky and I went to a Peruvian festival and I tried their carapulcra. I liked it. A lot. I liked it so much that I bought a bag of papa seca (dried potatoes, the…
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Recipe: Patita con maní (pork trotters with(out) peanuts)
Patita con maní is a traditional creole dish from my city. Middle- and upper-class urbanites tend to look down on it because it’s made from feet (pata = animal foot). Silly, I know. Not only because animal feet are cheap, but mainly because they’re full of collagen, which is highly nourishing for the joints, skin, and gut. Sadly, Alvaro and I never got to experience patita con maní back home. Now that I’ve found good sources of pork, I’m keen on experimenting with different cuts. Pork trotters were in my radar and when trying to decide what to cook with them I thought it was about time to give the…
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Recipe: Peruvian pork adobo
Let’s kick off this recipe with a few notes:
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Recipe: Low-carb Mongolian lamb with kelp noodles
A frozen butterflied leg of lamb started it all. Normally I would have slow-cooked it but I was craving Mongolian lamb. The recipe I’ve used in the past calls for hoisin sauce, which I haven’t bought for ages because of the ingredients. I searched the internet for homemade versions and came across a recipe that sounded easy to duplicate. It called for peanut butter, but I used ABC (almond, Brazil nut and cashew) butter instead with good results. Mongolian lamb is usually served with steamed rice but I used kelp noodles and Chinese broccoli instead to round off the meal. I’ve introduced a trick I found on the internet for…
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Recipe: Seco de carne (Peruvian beef & coriander stew)
Lamb is not a very popular meat in my hometown. It is in the highlands, but for some reason the urbanites prefer beef. This is a beef version of the lamb seco I published a while ago. Now, I know that this will sound insane… but I decided to use kombucha instead of chicha de jora, knowing that a) the stuff is not cheap, and b) the cooking process kills the beneficial bacteria. But taste-wise it made sense. The result? I’d say I won’t be buying chicha any time soon. I adapted this recipe from a very well known Peruvian chef. A quick note on tradition: this stew usually contains…
