Papa a la Huancaína

Papa a la huancaína covers boiled yellow potatoes with a spicy, creamy cheese sauce and finishes them with hard-boiled eggs and black olives. Peru Delights presents it as an appetizer associated with Huancayo and Peruvian cooking.

This version starts with ready ají amarillo paste, evaporated milk, vegetable oil, soda crackers and queso fresco. The ingredients are blended with salt until the sauce is smooth.

The author describes the finished sauce as having a custard-like consistency and allows more milk when it is too dense. This is the blender preparation rather than the separately discussed fresh-chilli method.

Lettuce leaves line four plates. Thick slices of the already-boiled, peeled yellow potatoes are placed over them and covered with a few tablespoons of the sauce.

Black olives, slices of the prepared hard-boiled eggs and parsley sprigs garnish the potatoes. In a reply, Peru Delights recommends serving the sauce at room temperature or almost cold when it accompanies potatoes.