Peruvian Highlands · Main
Olluquito con Charqui
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, richness that coats and comforts, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 700 g ollucos
- 200 g charqui (dried salted beef or llama)
- 150 g red onion, fine dice
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 3 tbsp ají amarillo paste
- 1 tbsp ají panca paste
- 45 ml oil or lard
- 1 tbsp dried oregano
- 300 g white rice, cooked, to serve
- salt and black pepper
The skills inside
Frying the paste until the oil splitsKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the charqui in cold water for 2 hours, changing it twice, then pound it flat with a mallet or a stone and pull it apart into fine threads along the grain. 120 min
- Cut the ollucos into 5 mm matchsticks and leave them dry; do not rinse them once cut.
- Fry onion, garlic and both ají pastes in the oil until the paste darkens to brick and the oil separates at the edge of the pan.
- Stir in the charqui threads to coat, then the ollucos, cover, and cook over low heat, stirring only twice, for 12 to 15 minutes, until they slump slightly but still snap when bitten. 15 min
- Add oregano, taste for salt at this point and not before, and serve over rice.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes
- It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
- The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
- The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
- The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
- Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.
Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.
Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias 150 recipes
- Take any three pieces from anywhere in the pile: they match closely enough in every dimension that you would have to measure them to argue otherwise.
- The cut faces are flat and clean rather than ragged or crushed; leaves and herbs are cut through, not bruised, and the board carries no dark smear where they were.
- The stated size is the actual size, held against a rule or a known reference rather than called about right.
- Everything in the pile is the shape that was asked for: no wedges, no half pieces, and no offcuts swept in to avoid waste.
- They cook evenly, which is the entire point: at the end of cooking nothing is still raw and nothing has collapsed.
Where it goes wrong The knife was dull, or the vegetable was never squared off first, so the pieces vary: the small ones are mush by the time the large ones are cooked, and the dish has two textures where it wanted one.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
- Also Right
- Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
- From the Taps
- Amber ale
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water, make room
Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.
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