Author: JD

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Cassava a la Huancaína

Cassava a la Huancaína

Cassava is a native South American vegetable that I never knew what to do with, even though I saw it quite often in Dutch supermarkets. The answer came from the Peruvian cuisine... delicious deep fried cassava with a creamy, spicy sauce. Here is the recipe. Yummy 🙂

Cassava a la Huancaína for 4 people (as a starter)

Ingredients:

1 kg Cassava
4 Chillies
20 peanuts (unsalted)
1 small onion
3 cloves of garlic
few leaves of parsley
30 ml whole milk
8 crackers
Oil for deep frying

Recipe:

- Peel the cassava and cook until it is a bit soft (like cooked potato) +/- 25 min
- Cut the cooked cassava in pieces (around the size of Belgium fries) removing the core
- Deep fry the cassava until golden at 180°C

 

For the sauce:

- Chop the garlic, onion and chillies finely
- Saute the garlic then add the chillies and the onion, fry until soft
- In the meantime crush the peanuts to a paste and put them into a food processor, add 8 crackers, add the sauted garlic, chillies and onion mix, 30 ml of whole milk and the parsley. Blend until smooth

Dip the fried cassava in the sauce and enjoy 🙂
 

 

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Passion Sour

Pisco Sour & Passion Sour

Peru is definitely famous for its cuisine but it has more to offer... Pisco Sour. Absolutely delicious and easy to make! It's based on pisco which is a brandy produced in the wine regions of Peru and Chile and it has quite some lime juice (that's why it's called pisco sour). It contains egg white which sounds really weird but that what's make it creamy, special and yummy:)

Pisco Sour recipe for one:

90 ml Pisco (or Grappa)
30 ml Lime juice
30 ml Sugar Syrup*
1 Egg white
5 Ice cubes
1 dash Angostura Bitter (normally added as a garnish. But without it, it tastes exactly the same)

- Mix in the blender Pisco, ice cubes, Lime juice and Sugar Syrup until all the ice is crushed.
- Add the egg white to the blender and mix again until foamy.
- Serve and enjoy immediately 🙂

 

Passion Sour recipe for one:

90 ml Pisco (or Grappa)
30 ml Passion fruit juice (or Maracuja)**
30 ml Sugar Syrup*
1 Egg white
5 Ice cubes
1 dash Angostura Bitter (normally added as a garnish. But without it, it tastes exactly the same)

- Mix in the blender Pisco, ice cubes, Passion fruit juice and Sugar Syrup until all the ice is crushed.
- Add the egg white to the blender and mix again until foamy.
- Serve and enjoy immediately 🙂

*To make a Sugar Syrup (if not possible to buy):

- Add 1 part water to 2 parts sugar stir and heat up until the sugar is dissolved.
- Let it cool down and the syrup is ready.

**To make the Passion fruit juice:

- Blend one passion fruit and sieve out the seeds.

 

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Buenos Aires, Argentina

Chimichurri

French fries have their mayonnaise or ketchup. Duck has its cranberry sauce. Chicken has its wine sauce. And steak has, according to the Argentinians, chimichurri. This sauce isn't only perfect with a steak but also with beef in general and game meat. In my opinion it is one of the most versatile and delicious meat sauce there is.
This is though my interpretation of the recipe. But then again every "madre" in Argentina has its own so there isn't really an official one.

Ingredients:
- big bunch of oregano (fresh is better then dried)
- big bunch of parsley (same as above)
- a few twigs of rosemary (same as above)
- oil (olive oil or just normal vegetable oil, I don't think you will taste that much of a difference)
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 4-5 lemons (juice only) most people use vinagre over here. I'm not a big fan of it so I use lemon juice
- salt
- pepper
- chili (either dried or a fresh rawit or even a jalapeño) (add how spicy you want it)
- water

Recipe:
- now when it comes to quantities you need 1/3 of water 1/3 of oil and 1/3 of acidity. I used 200 ml of water, 200 ml of oil and 200 ml of lemon juice
- chop the oregano, parsley, rosemary, garlic and the chili and add all to the liquid mixture
- season to taste and if it's too acidic add more oil or water
- leave it in the fridge overnight to get the best result

Use the sauce with a steak or actually any kind of meat 😉

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Miramar, Argentina

Eggplant conserve

Argentina is a country that wants to stay independent  and not use products from abroad. That's why everyone is dependent on local produce and seasons. And what's better to enjoy fruit and vegetables that are out if season than conserves.
Fruit is typically used to make a marmalade and vegetables are boiled in vinegar with spices and later on used on bread. Especially cooking in vinegar was a bit of a strange technique for us and even a more surprising result. Now eggplant conserve is our absolute favorite conserve which we would like to share:)

Recipe
Ingredients:
- 4 big eggplants
- salt
- vinegar
- water
- a few garlic toes
- oregano fresh or dry
- Chili powder or fresh chili
- oil

- peel the eggplants and cut them in about 1.5 cm thick slices
- lay them flat and put salt on them to extract water and bitterness from them
- after 20 min remove all the water from the eggplant with some kitchen towel
- make a solution of about 200 ml vinegar to 20 ml water in a pan and bring to a boil
- boil the slices of eggplant in the solution until they are translucent and cooked
- put the cooked slices into a glass pot add oregano, slices of garlic, Chili powder, some salt and pepper and cover it with oil let it cool off and put it in the fridge overnight
- put the delicious slices onto a piece of bread with cheese

Enjoy!

If you want to be able to store it for a longer period you should, before adding the eggplant slices to the jar, either put the jar in boiling water for 10 min or use some alcohol (around 70%) to kill all the germs

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In search of umami

Why would we call our website like this? You might ask. Well first of all, umami is considered by many scientists the fifth flavor. We have salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami. What the flavor really is, is a bit hard to explain. You can especially find it in meat, mushrooms, cheese and tomatoes. It's basically the savory flavor.

We really like savory food. And we like to search for good savory food. But this is not the reason why we called the website like that. It's actually the old meaning of the word that is the main reason. The word comes from Japanese. And like many Japanese words this one has a lot of weight. I'll try to explain it by telling you some definitions I found.

- A stock market tip with much promise is said to have umami
- A particularly good piece of writing can have umami
- Umami wakens positive emotions
- Umami contains a promise of a pleasurable outcome
- Umami conveys a sense of beauty
- It’s what you begin to understand if/when you mature, a journey

It's something new and unknown. That is why we chose to name our website like we did. The cool names that we actually wanted were already taken 🙂