Tacu tacu

Name: Tacu tacu
Yield: Serves 2, or 1 large to share
Cuisine: Peru, the Coastal Creole, Chifa and Nikkei Kitchen
Ingredients: as needed olive oil; 1 small red onion, chopped; 2 tbsp garlic, ground; 2 tbsp ají amarillo paste; 300g (480ml) cooked rice, from the day before; 300g (480ml) canary beans, cooked, from the day before; 120ml water; to taste salt and pepper; 2 tbsp olive oil, for frying; to serve fried egg and salsa criolla

Peru (Afro-Peruvian)

a rice and bean cake with the yolk of a soft fried egg beginning to run down its crisp seared side

Illustration

Researched: Researched from 64 sources in the brief

by Peru (Afro-Peruvian)

This is the strongest-sourced part of the history. During the colonial period enslaved Africans were given the cuts of animal Spanish landowners discarded, heart, tripe, lungs, liver, and Afro-Peruvian cooks turned that necessity into anticuchos: heavily seasoned to offset strong offal flavours, grilled over open coals, skewered on cane sticks for practical street distribution, beef heart favoured because, sliced thin and marinated, its texture and colour most resembled proper meat. Tacu tacu has the same logic in a different register, leftover rice and beans from the previous day, reworked by enslaved cooks on the haciendas of Chincha and Cañete rather than wasted, formed into a cake and pan-fried. Carapulcra combines an Andean preservation technology, sun-dried potato (papa seca), with an Afro-Peruvian hand for offal broths and ground peanut, a genuine three-layer dish rather than a single-origin one. Turrón de Doña Pepa's standard origin story credits Josefa Marmanillo, an Afro-Peruvian woman from the Cañete valley paralysed in her arms, who recovered mobility after devotion to the Señor de los Milagros and created the turrón in gratitude, distributed during the October procession; it is a devotional narrative rather than documented history, consistent across Peruvian sources but resting on faith tradition.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Tacu tacu

Serves 2, or 1 large to share.

Ingredients

as needed olive oil
1 small red onion, chopped
2 tbsp garlic, ground
2 tbsp ají amarillo paste
300g (480ml) cooked rice, from the day before
300g (480ml) canary beans, cooked, from the day before
120ml water
to taste salt and pepper
2 tbsp olive oil, for frying

To serve, optional

to serve fried egg and salsa criolla

Method

Make an aderezo in a frying pan over a medium heat with olive oil, the onion, garlic and ají amarillo.
When the onion is soft, add the rice and beans.
When it starts to stick, add the water and work it in so it turns creamy. Season.
Turn it out onto a plate. Heat the 2 tablespoons of oil in a clean pan over a high heat and add half the mixture for 2, or all of it for one large tacu tacu.
Shake the pan so it settles into the curve of the pan. When it is golden, turn it with a plate about the size of the pan.
Cook about 5 minutes more, until both sides are golden. Serve with a fried egg and salsa criolla.

Notes

Etymology is contested: a Quechua reading, "tacu tacu", roughly "smashed, smashed", describing the mashed texture, is the better-attested claim; a rival Swahili derivation appears in only one source and is not taken as established.

The recipe is Stephanie Pellny's, La Gastronauta, for El Comercio. PromPerú and El Comercio's own recipe agree on the build; none of the three uses ají panca. El Comercio cooks dried beans with bacon for an hour, browns each cake 8 minutes and then 5, and serves it with fried plantain and egg.

What a modern chef changes

Planned leftovers, an even crust, a liquid yolk

Method

Cook the rice and beans specifically the day before with the finished cake in mind rather than treating leftovers as an afterthought, seasoning them lightly under what the finished dish will need.
Sear the formed cake in a Big Green Egg run hot with a cast-iron surface for a genuinely even, all-over crust a domestic hob's single contact point cannot match.
Finish with a sous vide egg, yolk still fully liquid, rather than a pan-fried one, so it runs properly through the cake rather than sitting dry on top.

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