Papa a la Huancaína
Boiled potatoes under a yellow chilli and cheese sauce, cold, with olives and egg. Thirty-five minutes.
Photograph credit: Papa a la huancaína by morrissey · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr
How to Make Papa a la Huancaína
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Boil the potatoes whole in salted water for 20 minutes, until tender.
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Drain, cool completely, then peel and cut into thick slices.
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Fry the onion and garlic in 1 tbsp of the oil for 5 minutes, then cool.
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Blend the ají amarillo paste with the remaining oil until it emulsifies.
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Add the fried onion and garlic, the cheese, crackers, evaporated milk and salt.
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Blend until completely smooth and the thickness of double cream.
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Chill the sauce 20 minutes.
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Lay a lettuce leaf on each plate and arrange the potato slices over.
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Pour the cold sauce generously over the potatoes.
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Garnish with quartered egg and olives and serve cold.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Notes for Getting It Right
- Cream crackers, and no substitute.
- Emulsify the chilli paste with the oil before anything else.
- Everything cold, sauce included.
Common Substitutions & Variations
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
What Goes With Papa a la Huancaína
- Ceviche
- A pisco sour
- Anticuchos
Keeping and Reheating
The sauce keeps 3 days refrigerated and thickens; loosen with milk.
Papa a la Huancaína FAQ: Common Questions
How long does Papa a la Huancaína take to make?
15 minutes of preparation and 20 minutes of cooking, plus 20 minutes of chilling, so allow 55 minutes from start to finish. The method also needs time for cooling completely, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 4.
Nutrition per Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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