Papas a la Huancaina

This year our ward Christmas party was dubbed "Christmas Around the World" and Pastor was asked to make a traditional Christmas dish from Peru. Pastor really wanted to make this Papas a la Huancaina, which I've had only once before and could only speculate on how it's made.

Papas a la Huancaina, according to Pastor, is a traditional Peruvian food that is made on any major holiday like Christmas and Easter.

Pastor knew he wanted to make it, but had no idea how. His mom did all the cooking when he was home in Peru and he couldn't for the life of him recall what to do. He knew we needed eggs, olives, potatoes, lettuce, cheese, crackers, milk and peppers, but he didn't know how to say the kind of crackers, pepper or cheese we needed in English. I could only guess and was all for getting the peppers from a bottle. We bought Mozzarella cheese, hoping that was the right kind.

Thanks to our friend Roy, we knew that the cheese needed to be white and fresh and that the peppers were orange and spicy. Needless to say, we didn't get bottled peppers. Luckily, on our way home from the store, we found a Latino market that had hot Chili peppers stocked in their freezer. I've never used Chili peppers before and didn't know this was the one we were after. The only orange pepper I could think of was a bell pepper.

Anyway, I'm posting the recipe we used, because it was so hard to locate and get just right and find all the right ingredients.

Papas a la Huancaina

You will need:

Feta Cheese (we used Mozzarella and it turned out okay), milk, 4 hard boiled eggs (peeled), large pitted olives, saltine crackers (we actually used salted butter crackers), 2-3 Amarillo peppers (use chili peppers if you can't find them), 6-7 large potatoes (we used Yukon Gold, which took 8-9), vegetable oil, garlic powder, salt and lettuce

Steps to follow:

Boil the potatoes whole until you can stick a fork in the biggest and the fork comes away clean.

On a large tray or dish, arrange lettuce so it looks pretty. The lettuce is only for looks, but is traditional. Cut the boiled potatoes lengthwise into 1/4 inch slices and arrange in one flat row. Try not to overlap them too much because they will be doused in the cheese sauce.

In a blender, combine 2-3 seeded Amarillo peppers to taste (warning, you may want to wear gloves while handling, my skin burned for hours after), one cap of veggie oil, about half a pack of saltine crackers, 1 cup Feta cheese, 1 tsp garlic powder and salt, and milk. The goal is to get a very thin cake batter-like texture. That's what the crackers are for, to thicken the batter. So only add the milk a tiny bit at a time until you get the desired texture. Blend these ingredients together until smooth. Then pour the cheesy sauce over the potatoes arranged on the platter.

Once the sauce is poured, halve the hard boiled eggs and arrange on platter. We just scattered them around the potatoes and mainly used them for decoration. Then scatter 6 or 7 large pitted olives as well. I added a few sprigs of cilantro to make it really pretty.

Remember that this can be altered to taste, this is just the way we did it. You can add more or less cheese and peppers or whatever you like to taste. I was delightfully surprised at how well it did turn out. The only Papas a la Huancaina I'd had was cold and the potatoes were hard. Not a very good combination. So if you're in the mood for something new, this is nice, delicious and mildly spicy recipe. We just had such a hard time finding the right things that I thought I would share my trial and error. :o)