Best of South American Cooking

It all started with this beautiful gift I received from Colombia - a box of individually packaged portions of a cumin-based rub.

Searching the internet and my personal library did not yield any authentic-sounding Colombian recipes. So I expanded my horizons and went searching for food ideas from other South American countries.

It was fun and resulted in one of the more interesting and great tasting dinners I experimented with.

Here is the adventure. Anyone interested in the recipes for this whole dinner, just email a request.




From Paraguay - Potaje De Garbanzo Con Acelga

A really tasty soup. Chickpeas are simmered with chunks of onion, garlic and whole tomatoes. After two hours, those latter ingredients are taken out, pureed are returned to the soup base along with spinach.

Simple flavours, but rich in texture, taste and definitely photogenic.

From Bolivia - Picante De Gallina

I marinated the chicken with the Colombian spices and hot cayenne pepper and cooked them with onions over low heat for 1.5 hours.

The sauce was a mixture of red peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic with oregano and caraway. Sauce went over the chicken.

The mix of spices gave it a taginey feel with a definite South American kick.

From Peru - Papas a La Huancaina

A simple boiled potatoes salad covered in a warm cream cheese and green peppers mix and sprinkled with hot red chilli strips. Looked like a salad from Mars but tasted like a salad from heaven.

Attempting South American dessert would have put me over the edge tonight so I stuck to my dinner guest's favourite dessert - Duncan Hines White Cake. 

For frosting, I had a bit of Pamela's Vanilla Frosting mix which was not enough for the cake. I started adding vanilla, icing sugar, light cream and butter at random and mixing until I got the right texture (albeit with butter chunks).

Amazingly, the frosting worked and went very well with the cake.

All was eaten, including 1/2 of the cake, before the clock stuck midnight.