Amazonia · Volume 23, The Andean Amazon
Inchicapi
San Martín, Loreto and Ucayali, Peru
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour 35
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Inchicapi
San Martín, Loreto and Ucayali . 1 hour 35 minutes
Ingredients
- 4 pieces chicken
- around 4 litres water, lightly salted
- 1 onion
- 1 tbsp, ground garlic
- 2 tbsp, ground ají amarillo
- 200g, toasted peanut
- 100g, as flour corn
- 1 bunch sachaculantro
- as available chicken stock, a portion of the reserved stock
- 300g yuca, cut into small pieces
- to taste salt
- to taste pepper
- to taste oregano
- to taste cumin
Method
- Cook the chicken in around four litres of lightly salted water.
- Brown onion, garlic and ají amarillo in oil.
- Blend the browned onion, garlic and ají amarillo together with peanut, corn, sachaculantro and a portion of the chicken stock.
- Stir this base back into the pot and cook for around 5 minutes to the desired consistency.
- Add small pieces of yuca as the soup nears readiness.
- Finish with salt, pepper, oregano and cumin.
Notes
The Quechua-derived name attaching to a Loreto Amazonian dish implies a highland-lowland contact history, plausibly via the missions or the rubber-era economy, that no source in this research actually explained; the etymology itself is solid, the historical mechanism behind it is not asserted here.
What a modern chef changes
High-power blend, sous vide chicken, toasted base
Method
- Blend the peanut-and-aromatic base in a high-power blender for a genuinely silkier body than a standard blender achieves, then pass it through a chinois to remove any remaining fibre before it goes back into the pot.
- Confit the chicken separately, sous vide, and shred it back into the finished soup at the very end, so it stays properly moist rather than fibrous after the full cooking time.
- Toast the peanuts and corn fresh before blending, in a dry pan or briefly on the Big Green Egg, for a depth the standard recipe's raw peanut base does not carry.