The Andes · Volume 21, Colombia, the Andean Interior

Ajiaco santafereño

Name: Ajiaco santafereño
Yield: Serves four
Cuisine: Colombia, the Andean Interior
Ingredients: 750g chicken, skin off and bone in; 2 cloves garlic; 1 onion; ¾ cup fresh guascas leaves, divided in half; 500g papa pastusa; 250g papa criolla; 2 ears fresh corn, cut into rounds; 375g papa sabanera, whole or in large pieces; as available stock, to top up; to serve white rice, to serve; to serve avocado, sliced, to serve; ¾ cup cream, in a jug, to serve; to serve capers, in a small bowl, to serve

Bogotá, Colombia

Ajiaco santafereño, a three-potato chicken and guascas soup: a wide shallow bowl of thick, pale golden soup, shredded chicken and rounds of corn on the cob breaking the surface, a few whole tender potatoes visible through the broth.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.

Researched: Researched from 130 sources in the brief, none yet linked in the text
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

by Bogotá, Colombia

The clearest indigenous core in this volume is ajiaco, and its documentation predates any claim that it is a colonial invention dressed up as tradition. The Spanish soldier Bernardo Vargas Machuca recorded a Muisca precursor in the mid-sixteenth century, and by 1660 the Franciscan friar Joaquín de Finestrad described both ajiaco and a maize porridge as Muisca food, explicitly noting that the indigenous version at that point carried no meat. The traditional Bogotá cook María Elsy Giraldo puts the attribution plainly: it is the dish the Muisca prepared, and what the Spanish added afterward, poultry, dairy, capers, European pots, made it, in her own words, a mestizo dish rather than a purely indigenous or purely colonial one. Wheat is the clearest marker of that colonial layer specifically: it was sown on the savanna's drier, higher ground because it needed conditions the potato ground did not offer, but Bogotá's cloud cover and humidity meant local wheat never met demand, and colonial authorities repeatedly restricted grain sales from Tunja province, now Boyacá, to protect the capital's own supply. A cold-land, hot-land exchange grew up around this scarcity: the cold savanna sent meat, wheat and hides down to the tropical lowlands and received panela and fermented cane drink back in return, which is the entire explanation for why panela, a lowland product with no highland growing conditions of its own, is nonetheless everywhere in this chapter's pantry. By the nineteenth century ajiaco already carried Bogotá's own civic prestige, appearing in the city's literary circles and in print by 1893; the city council made that status official in 2004, declaring ajiaco santafereño part of Bogotá's cultural patrimony by formal decree.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Ajiaco santafereño

Serves four

Ingredients

750g chicken, skin off and bone in
2 cloves garlic
1 onion
¾ cup fresh guascas leaves, divided in half
500g papa pastusa
250g papa criolla
2 ears fresh corn, cut into rounds
375g papa sabanera, whole or in large pieces
as available stock, to top up
to serve white rice, to serve
to serve avocado, sliced, to serve
¾ cup cream, in a jug, to serve
to serve capers, in a small bowl, to serve

Method

Simmer the chicken in water with the garlic, onion and half the guascas for 30 to 40 minutes.
Add the papa pastusa and papa criolla and cook until the criolla has fully broken down and the broth has thickened and turned pale gold.
Add the corn rounds with more stock and cook a further 15 minutes.
Add the papa sabanera, whole or in large pieces, so it holds its shape rather than dissolving with the first two.
Return the shredded chicken to the pot with the remaining guascas and simmer a final 10 minutes.
Serve with white rice, sliced avocado, a jug of cream and a small bowl of capers alongside, each diner finishing their own bowl at the table.

What a modern chef changes

Precision Chicken, Silked Broth

Rung 01, 02

Method

Poach the chicken sous vide to a precise, still-succulent doneness before it meets the pot.
Shred it only at the very end so it never dries out over the guasca-infused simmer that follows.
Cook the pastusa and criolla potatoes in the same pot on the hob as tradition, since a machine cannot improve on a technique already correctly matched to its ingredient.
Pass the finished broth, once the potatoes have dissolved, through a chinois for a genuinely silken body.
Fold the sabanera potato and the reserved sous vide chicken back in only at the point of serving.
Dehydrate a portion of the corn kernels separately into a crisp, concentrated garnish, scattered over the top rather than simmered soft inside the bowl.

Open in the atlas: cook mode, scaling and tick off lists