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Recipe: Garbanzos con acelga y chorizo (chickpeas with silverbeet and chorizo)
Last week I posted a recipe for the “regular” version of garbanzos con acelga (see recipe here). Garbanzos con acelga y chorizo is a tasty variation which includes the popular Spanish sausage for the meat eaters out there. Before you start, a few notes on ingredients: Last but not least, as with any stew, this tastes better a day or two later.
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Recipe: Garbanzos con acelga (chickpeas with silverbeet)
Garbanzos con acelga (chickpeas with silverbeet) is a traditional Spanish stew. This recipe is gluten-free, high in fibre and vegan if you use vegetable stock. Like many other dishes from Spain, this one has been adopted and adapted in Peruvian cuisine. We tend to make it with ají panca instead of tomato paste, and serve it with rice instead of bread. My unorthodox contribution is that squeeze of lemon juice at the end to add brightness. Most importantly, the vitamin C from the lemon will help you absorb the non-haem iron present in the chickpeas and the silverbeet (a.k.a spinach in Australia). Last but not least, as with any stew,…
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Recipe: Sudado de pescado (Peruvian steamed fish)
Sudado de pescado can be considered a soup or a stew. I guess it depends on how you serve it: with boiled cassava or with boiled cassava and rice. The verb sudar means “to sweat”… in this context, it means the fish is steamed on top of a bed of onions and tomatoes with a delicious broth. One of the broth ingredients is chicha de jora, a fermented beverage made from malted maize (corn), commonly used in Peruvian cuisine. It is also served as a drink in many towns in the highlands to children and adults, despite its alcoholic content. Back in the day, the fermentation was kickstarted by chewing…
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Recipe: Locro (Peruvian pumpkin stew)
I’m sure there are a million locro recipes out there because it’s fair to say this is an everyday staple in almost every Peruvian household. The way I make it is not the way my mum makes it, nor the way my aunties make it, nor the way my mother-in-law makes it. This is one of the few dishes Alvaro insists on keeping meat-free, with a fried egg (or three) on top. Works for me.
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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…
