Cue the pan flutes, or, better yet, throw on an Yma Sumac CD. (If you don’t have a Sumac CD, here is a link: Yma Sumac. Sumac was a 1950’s Peruvian vocal phenom with an amazing five octave vocal range and a legendary temper that befitted the green-eyed Inca princess she claimed to be.)
You definitely need some exotic mood music with this soup.
This is a Peruvian chowder. If you read Blue Cayenne regularly, you know that this Irish girl brakes for potatoes–any kinds of potatoes and tubers, in fact. So, chowder recipes always always catch my eye. Throw in an exotic angle like Peruvian cuisine and you have my full attention.
This chowder is full of all sorts of good stuff–yams, quinoa, red onions, cream, and peppers. Actually, the recipe calls for an unusual ingredient, a Peruvian pepper paste called aji amarillo. Not having any of the paste on hand, I was able to substitute two minced jalapeños. My soup was spicy but not overly so. (You can buy the paste on Amazon, by the way. Jeff Bezos has everything!)
Here is a photo of the peppers. They are bright orange and orange peppers make me cautious, having foolishly tasted a couple of habaneros in my day. Max Fallowitz, writing on the Serious Eats site, says the amarillos only register medium to hot, though. Fallowitz waxes poetic when describing the fruity-hot flavor of the aji amarillo: “If there were chiles to taste like sunshine, this would be it.” That’s a pretty strong endorsement. Pretty writing, too.
Here is the recipe.
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There are a lot of Peruvian chowder recipes online. This recipe was adapted from recipes that appear in the Milk Street Magazine (https://www.177milkstreet.com/) and Laura b. Russel’s blog (http://laurabrussell.com/peruvian-quinoa-chowder/).
