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Recipe: Cauliflower arroz a la cubana
The poor person’s Peruvian dish of choice is arroz a la cubana (Cuban-style rice), which I’m willing to bet doesn’t exist in Cuba (much like our Russian-style eggs, but that’s a topic for another time). When I was a kid it I considered it a treat (sweet fried stuff for lunch!) but then I realised it was just a cost-saving strategy. Either way, it’s a dish that is deeply ingrained in my memory, and as such, I crave it from time to time. I have no issues with eating small quantities of rice but this dish needs a big whack of it to fill you up and mop up the…
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Recipe: Dairy-free crema volteada
Another dairy-free version of another Peruvian classic dessert: crema volteada (our take on crème caramel). This is my mother-in-law’s and my sister Gloria’s favourite dessert. The original version uses evaporated and condensed milk, and is served with caramelised sugar on top. Yes, it is very sweet. I used coconut milk and cream and just enough honey to make it slightly sweet. The texture was very similar to the original version but was paler in colour because there were less protein and sugar to react with the heat.
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Recipe: Peruvian-spiced Christmas turkey
This is my version of the roasted turkey we had every Christmas back home. I used to marinate it with a pre-made spice mix, stout, and Coke (I know…). A while ago I tested a recipe for charcoal chicken and I thought “this tastes like Christmas turkey”, so I tweaked the recipe and the result was very damn close.
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Recipe: Gluten and dairy-free ají de gallina in the slow cooker
This is my first attempt to make a gluten and dairy-free version of the classic Peruvian dish ají de gallina (I posted a more traditional recipe here). Considering the original version contains bread, milk (evaporated!), and Parmesan cheese, this wasn’t an easy task. I used pecan meal instead of bread, coconut cream instead of milk and celery salt to compensate for the lack of the Parmesan’s umaminess. The result was good, obviously not as good as to fool someone who has tried the real deal, but hopefully, I’ll get there eventually.
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Recipe: Chilcano de pescado (Peruvian fish broth)
Not to be confused with the other chilcano!. This is basically a fish broth that is often served as a complimentary starter in cebicherías. It’s simple, tangy, and comforting. I’ve been craving chilcano de pescado for a while but didn’t have fish bones on hand. We had grilled fish the other day and I saved the bones to make a batch of broth.
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Recipe: Sopa criolla (creole soup)
Sopa criolla is a classic from my hometown, Lima. It’s a tasty comfort food but unfortunately not very kind to the gut. Apart from the Peruvian holy trinity of onion, garlic, and chilli, it has tomatoes, wheat noodles and milk. Gut bomb. Luckily, I found that making it gluten- and milk- free increases its digestibility without sacrificing flavour. Here’s my version of the soup.
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Recipe: Salchicha criolla (Peruvian-style pork sausage)
The most influential chef in the history of Peruvian cuisine, Gastón Acurio, shares quick recipes via his Facebook and Twitter accounts. Granted, 99% of them have rice, pasta or potatoes as foundation ingredients, but once in a while something I’d actually eat pops up. A long time ago I copied his recipe for salchicha criolla, his take, I assume, on salchicha de Huacho (Huacho being a coastal town in Perú), a very popular and tasty flavourful sausage usually eaten with scrambled eggs at breakfast. A brunch at Efendy a couple of years ago revealed the fact that sucuk, the spicy Turkish sausage, is a close relative to our salchicha de…
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Recipe: Palta rellena con camarones (stuffed avocado with prawns)
A few weeks ago my Facebook status reflected how I missed avocados from back home, after opening one I bought for $1 at Woolworths that was horrible inside. A few Peruvian friends chimed in, including Victor who lives in Spain and can buy Peruvian avos there, and Gino who lives in the Central Coast and mentioned palta rellena con camarones (stuffed avocado with prawns). The craving was on. Palta rellena is a great warm weather entrée. It’s basically a mayo-bound salad served in a half avocado. The most popular protein of choice in the filling is pulled chicken (chicken breast that has been boiled and pulled in strips with a…
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Recipe: Slow-cooked cebiche de pato (duck cebiche)
Cebiche is usually raw seafood marinated in lime juice and served with chillies and sliced onions. But there are as many kinds of cebiches as flavours of potato chips in Australia, to give you an idea. There’s cold cebiche (raw, for example the classic one made with fish) and hot cebiche (cooked, for example camarones a la piedra). In the North of Perú, the land of the best ducks and the liberal use of coriander, there’s cebiche de pato. The best taste is achieved by slow cooking it in clay pot. Because I don’t have one, I came up with this variation for the slow cooker. On a non-culinary note:…
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Recipe: Seafood cau cau
This is another Peruvian dish that features offal, but unlike anticuchos I prefer to stay away from the traditional version and use an alternative protein. The dish is commonly cooked with mondongo (cow’s stomach), which for me and many people is not very fun to eat mainly because of its texture (feels like having a towel in your mouth and has the chewiness of silicone). Its smell and taste is also off-putting for some, you have to cook the thing for at least 3 hours with hierbabuena (a kind of mint) to lessen the offending aromas. Thankfully most recipes are not carved in stone and allow for ingredient substitutions quite…
