Timbuche

As tradition built it

Timbuche

Serves 6. About 30 minutes.

Ingredients

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

• 6 fresh river fish (mojarreta, palometa, carachama, paiche, boquichico, lisa)
• 1.4 litres water
• salt
• 3, optional eggs, beaten
• to taste culantro or sacha culantro

To serve

• to serve cooked plantain or boiled yuca
• to serve fariña, in Loreto

Method

1. Wash the fish well and cut each into three.
2. When the water starts to boil, put in the fish and salt it.
3. Boil 20 minutes.
4. Take it off the heat and stir in the beaten egg, if you use it, and the culantro.
5. Serve with cooked plantain or boiled yuca.

Notes

It carries the popular nickname “levanta muerto,” wakes the dead, reflecting its reputation as a hangover and restorative dish, a genuinely everyday counterpart to juane's festival grandeur.

The recipe is from Recetas Ricas de la Selva Ucayalina, a Contamana cook's blog of her mother's recipes. The Gastronomía de Loreto blog boils a kilo of whole boquichico 10 to 15 minutes in 2 litres of water with ají dulce and garlic, and in Loreto puts a generous spoon of fariña in the bowl.

What a modern chef changes

Roasted bones, clarified broth, a fine fariña dust

Method

1. Roast the fish bones and heads separately before building the broth, then clarify the finished stock through a chinois for real clarity and depth rather than the cloudier result plain simmering gives.
2. Stir the beaten egg through at the very last moment, off the heat, so it sets into fine, tender ribbons rather than curdling into lumps the way a rolling simmer tends to produce.
3. Dehydrate a portion of the fariña further and grind it fine in the spice grinder into a genuinely crisp finishing dust, a real elevation of a garnish that traditionally arrives coarse.