Papas a La Huancaina

To address the concerns out there that there's too many games, and not enough food to eat while you're playing, I have the solution! I'm back with another recipe my dad shared with our family growing up: Potatoes Huancayo-Style, or Papas a la Huancaina.

The heart of the recipe is the Huancaina sauce, a spicy-cheesy sauce enhanced with aji amarillo, a hot yellow pepper native to Peru. It's challenging to find whole, fresh peppers in the States, so my dad buys aji paste in a jar from a specialty store back in my hometown in upstate NY. Less graceful than the real thing, but it gets the job done!

I haven't seen them around the Bronx, but my guess is that specialty stores in Jackson Heights (there's a large South American population there) might have them! My dad told me you could replace the aji amarillo with another spicy pepper like serrano or jalapeno, but you should also add yellow bell pepper so it still looks yellow when it comes out.

Remember though: If you're not using aji amarillo, it's not really Papas a La Huancaina!!

Huancaina sauce is great because you can add it to lots of things, not just potatoes. My dad makes a similar recipe and adds shredded chicken to make it a meal on its own. And pretty much any thing that calls for (or just sounds good with) a cheese sauce will go great with the Huancaina sauce.

In this recipe, I'll be making it the traditional Peruvian way with boiled potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. This is a great side-dish, and you could even eat it as a quick lunch/snack.

You need a couple of ingredients to get started, and other than the pepper, they're all relatively easy to find.

• 1 cup of a cheese that will be easy to blend. The traditional recipe calls for queso blanco/fresco, but my dad likes the flavor of feta cheese better. You can probably experiment with other cheeses as well and decide what you like best.
• Potatoes - find the most flavorful potato you can find. I'm using Idaho, and I've heard good things about Yukon Gold. How many you get depends on how many you're feeding, obviously. They should be peeled and eyed.
  
• Aji Amarillo - assuming you don't have the whole peppers, 2-3 tablespoons of the paste will be enough.
  
• Eggs - you'll be hard-boiling these with the potatoes. As many as you need for the people you'll be feeding, a sliced egg will be enough for one serving
  
• Evaporated Milk (1 cup) - you can find this milk in cans in the baking section. It's really good for sauces (a hint, it's a key ingredient in Dulce de Leche!)
• Vegetable Oil (1/4 cup) - it calls for this type of oil, but you can probably use other oils just fine.
• Saltine Crackers - these will be used to thicken the sauce, my dad says this is a necessity!!
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Once you've acquired all these ingredients, it's just as easy as throwing them in a blender! Remember, you should be boiling the potatoes and eggs while doing this so they're ready to eat once you've made the sauce.



Start with the cheese, then add the yellow pepper and evaporated milk and start blending (puree). You'll need to break up the cheese to facilitate blending!

As you're blending, take off the cover and slowly add crackers and oil. I used about 7 crackers and a 1/4 cup of oil, but you can play around with the quantities. At this point you can test the sauce for thickness. It should be thick enough that it holds together, but it should still fall off the spoon. If it's dripping like water, add more crackers. If it's really thick, add more milk or water. It's really a matter of taste, and speaking of taste - feel free to add salt and pepper as well.

The traditional recipe also calls for olives for garnish, but I HATE olives, so we'll refrain for today. If you used the amount of ingredients of my recipe, you should have plenty of sauce when you're done. (You can refrigerate the sauce for later)

Cut your potatoes into slices, add sliced hard-boiled eggs on top, then spoon a generous amount of sauce on top. I'm going to add some parsley flakes and pepper on top for garnish.



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OBSERVATIONS

1) It's spicy!! I used 3 tablespoons of the aji amarillo, and I think next time I might use only two. I should note that aji grants an interesting spiciness: it's more smoky than hot. It tastes like it fizzles in your mouth a bit, but it's not an overwhelming heat - just enough to remind you're eating kick-ass Peruvian food! You should definitely have at least 1-2 tablespoons of pepper, or else you're just eating cheese! Save the cheese for the nachos.

2) Boiling potatoes and eggs at same time: I loosely used this video to guide me through the recipe, but next time I think I'll cook the eggs and potatoes separately, since they boil differently. You can boil the eggs and refrigerate them until they're ready to be eaten, and that's what I'll do next time. Anyone with more experience in boiling have any tips for me?

3) Thicker sauce = better sauce: Be generous with the saltine crackers! I think it would be very hard to make the sauce too thick, and even if you did, it's easy enough to add more milk/water. A thick sauce will stick to the potatoes and eggs - exactly what you want!

Let me know what you think, does this look like something you might want to try? Leave some comments for me, because the Pampered Boardgamer has been rather lonely as of late. Till next time!