Posts Tagged With: sopa de mani

This is my 300th blog! Thank you for reading.

Bolivian Entree

SOPA DE MANI
(Peanut and Potato Soup)

INGREDIENTS 

2 chicken breasts
4 cloves garlic
1 large onion
1 cup raw, unsalted peanuts
1 cup water
3 Yukon gold potatoes (to be chopped into pieces)
1 Yukon gold potato (to be cut into strips)
2 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil (1/4 cup more later)
6 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cilantro
1 teaspoon parsley

SPECIAL APPLIANCE

blender

PREPARATION

Cut chicken breasts into 1/2″ cubes. Mince garlic and onions. Put peanuts and water into blender. Use chop setting until you get a smooth white liquid or paste. Peel potatoes. Cut 3 potatoes into 1/2″ slices. Cut each slice into 2 or 3 pieces. Cut 1 potato into 1/4″ by 1/4″ inch strips.

Put oil, garlic, and onion in frying pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onions soften or start to turn golden brown. Stir frequently. Transfer sautéed garlic and onion to soup pot.

Add chicken cubes, peanut paste, potato pieces (not the potato strips), chicken broth, cumin, oregano, pepper, and salt to soup pot. Simmer on low heat for about 40 minutes or until potato pieces are soft. Stir occasionally. (It is also a good idea to stir occasionally when watching tv or you may be thrown out with that old sofa you’re sitting on.)

While soup is cooking, add 1/4 cup vegetable oil and strips from one potato to frying pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until potato strips turn golden brown. Stir frequently enough to keep strips or fries from burning. (Note, hot oil splatters. Tip the frying pan away from you or hold a lid between you and the frying pan when stirring the fries.)

Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish equal bowl with an equal amount of cilantro, parsley, and fried potato strips .If desired, add as much LLAJUA, (spicy sauce) to each bowl.

TIDBITS

1) Bolivians love potatoes.

2) They did not love McDonald’s enough. McDonald’s left Bolivia  on December 1, 2001 after seven years of trying. Bolivians simply preferred their own style of cooking or were too poor to eat out .

3) Iceland does not have McDonald’s either. It costs too much to get potatoes from Germany.

4) Many of the poor countries between the Mediterranean Sea and South Africa are without McDonald’s. The same holds true for ex-Soviet republic in Central Asia.sauté

5) American forces fought in the Vietnam War in: Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. These countries do not have McDonald’s.

6) North Korea and Iran have nuclear-weapons programs. They are unfriendly to us and have no McDonald’s.

7) Indeed, most countries do not have McDonald’s restaurants in them are poor, have fought America, or have become hostile nuclear powers.

8) Think about that when you’re tempted to pass by an empty McDonald’s in some foreign land.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.