Peruvian Food

Causa is favorite Peruvian food. It’s made by mashing yellow potatoes (papas amarillas) and then layering or filling them jelly roll style. There is causa filled with vegetables, chicken, seafood – just about anything. It’s a light food. It’s usually used as an appetizer.

Ingredients :

2 pouns of yellow potatoes
1 chicken breast, boiled and shredded
2 large avocados strong
2 carrots, peeled and boiled diced, or a bag of mix frozen carrots and green peas.
3 yellow peppers liquefied
Juice of 3 lemons
oil
1 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
4 eggs boiled and chopped

Preparation :

Boil, peel and mash the potatoes.
Add salt and pepper, lemon and the yellow pepper
In a Pyrex put a thick layer with half of the mix
in another bowl Mix chicken, carrots and some of the mayonnaise and put it on potatoes covering all
Put another layer of mashed potatoes
Peel and slice the avocado and put it on the second layer of potatoes and put mayonnaise on avocado.
Cover the avocado with the last layer of potatoes.
Garnish with chopped boiled eggs and the parsley.

for (8 servings)

Papa a la Huancaína (literally, Huancayo style potatoes) is a Peruvian salad of boiled yellow potatoes (similar to the Yukon Gold potatoes) in a spicy, creamy sauce called Huancaína sauce. It is typically served cold as a starter over lettuce leaves and garnished with black olives, white corn kernels and hard boiled egg quarters.

The sauce is made of fresh white cheese (Queso fresco-similar to feta or lumpy farmers cheese), vegetable oil, aji amarillo (yellow Peruvian pepper), evaporated milk and salt mixed in a blender. Some recipes call for garlic, onion and crushed saltines.

Ingredients :

3 ají amarillo fresco / fresh yellow aji (chili), seeded and deveined

12 oz farmers cheese (ricotta or feta)

Oil

2/3 cup milk

1 small onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, crushed

8 yellow or white potatoes

Lettuce leaves

2 hard-boiled eggs

8 large black olives, halved

Preparation:

Heat a large pot of salted water to boiling and add the potatoes.

Boil potatoes until tender when pierced with a fork.

Drain water from potatoes and let cool.

Place ají in a blender. Pour milk and blend.

Sauté onion with garlic in oil until cooked.

Transfer this to blender together with the cheese.

While blending, add oil until a creamy sauce is obtained.

Slice potatoes and arrange on top of the lettuce leaves.

Pour huancaína sauce over potatoes, and garnish with slices of hard-boiled egg and black olive halves. Serves 4 to 6.