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The Andes · Volume 20, Pork, Potato and the Twelve Grain Feast

Yaguarlocro

The Sierra highlands, Ecuador

Yaguarlocro, a potato soup with blood sausage and tripe: a deep bowl of pale potato soup, dark reddish brown pieces of set blood and pale curls of tripe resting just beneath the creamy surface.

Illustration

As tradition built it

Yaguarlocro

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

  • 1.8kg (4lb), mixed varieties, peeled and cut potatoes
  • 1 cup, finely chopped onion
  • 2 tbsp, crushed garlic
  • to taste cumin
  • 2 litres light stock
  • 900g (about half a rueda) sheep tripe, cleaned and cooked
  • 1 litre, cooked in salted water and drained sheep's blood
  • white onion, for the blood sofrito
  • garlic, for the blood sofrito
  • oregano
  • to taste salt and pepper
  • to serve avocado, to serve
  • to serve raw onion, to serve

Method

  1. Build a locro base exactly as above, potato cooked down in a light stock with an onion, garlic and cumin refrito, but add cleaned, cooked sheep tripe to the simmering pot rather than leaving it as a pure vegetable soup.
  2. Prepare the sheep's blood separately: make a small sofrito of white onion, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper, and stir the blood through it gently over low heat until it just sets, taking care not to let it overcook and turn grainy.
  3. Fold the cooked blood mixture through the finished soup at the very end, off the heat, so it thickens the broth without curdling.
  4. Serve with avocado and raw onion on top.

What a modern chef changes

Sous vide tripe, set blood custard, chinois-strained base

Rung 05

Method

  1. Cook the tripe sous vide, low and slow, rather than simmered loose in the soup, so it becomes genuinely tender rather than merely cooked through, then slice it into clean, deliberate pieces rather than the rough chunks of the everyday version.
  2. Make the blood element as a smooth, set custard rather than a loose stirred-through addition: temper the seasoned blood gently, set it in a shallow tray in a low oven or water bath until just firm, then cut it into a single clean cube per bowl, so the diner meets it as a discrete, considered component rather than something dissolved through the broth.
  3. Pass the potato base through a chinois for a fully smooth soup, and finish with a small quenelle of avocado rather than a scattering of slices, so the whole dish reads as the same three ideas, potato, blood, offal, deliberately separated and then reassembled rather than cooked as one pot from the start.
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