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Street food Recipe: Peruvian Stuffed Potatoes


This fried starter is quite popular in many South American countries, with slight variations per city. Some peruvians say it was first prepared by soldiers who fought in the Pacific War. While walking long distances for several days, these soldiers would have to carry food with no bags, nor how to refrigerate it. Such a problem made them come up with a smart idea. They would cook and season the meat, and mix it with boiled potatoes until it would became a sort of dough. They would placed the meat inside and then fried it to make it consistent. True or not, that recipe is now wide spread in Peruvian culture, as part of street food tradition in many cities around the country. Try it yourself:

Ingredients

  • 3 large potatoes (if you have access to peruvian varieties such as white and yellow potatoes, it would be perfect)
  • 1 peace cassava
  • 300 grams of ground beef
  • 1 yellow pepper
  • 1 onion
  • 2 teaspoon minced garlic
  • 1 teaspoon of peruvian ají panca
  • 1 tablespoon tomato sauce
  • Parsley
  • 2 eggs
  • Flour
  • Salt
  • Olives and raisins
  • Pepper

Preparation

In order to achieve a tasty stuffing, use a frying pan to heat up oil and add yellow pepper in tiny pieces. After one or two minutes, add the ground beef into that pan only and fry the mix but avoid overcooking it, so it would keep its moisture. In that same pan, add the garlic and the diced onion.

When the onion is cooked, add the yellow pepper, the aji panca, the tomato paste and - on top of it - the cooked meat. Mix in some salt and a little pepper. You can add raisins and / or olives if you want; and finally parsley. Mix it up until you get a uniform stuffing.

As for the external part, put the three potatoes and a piece of cassava to boil in a pot with salt and water; and in another pot, boil the eggs. Once the potatoes are ready, let them cool off and smash them in a glass bowl, adding a little salt and pepper.

To prepare each portion ready to fry, squish a little of the mashed potatoes and make room to add the stuffing along with a piece of boiled egg. Shape it, spread some flour on it and you can now fry.



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