Food That You Step On

Potatoes are a staple in Peruvian and Bolivian food, and one dish, chuño, is particularly interesting. I watched a fascinating episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, where, in Bolivia, he visited a farm where they prepared this potato.

The process is strange- potatoes are left in cold mountain air, to freeze at night, thaw in daylight sun, freeze again, and so on. The end result is a naturally freeze dried potato, and can be white or black in appearance. Within the freezing process, the potatoes are trampled by bare feet, I believe in order to remove the skins to further aid the freezing process. Andrew Zimmern even had the opportunity to try his hand (or foot, haha) at trampling the potatoes, but was soon told he was smashing them too harshly as he did it with too little love, and was too overweight. What a bummer, eh?

The whole process dates back to before the Inca Empire, and, not surprisingly, the potatoes can then last for years. Now, you can even get chuñu in a can, although I have no idea if you could find it here in America.

Anyway, I was watching this show with my friend Erika, who is from Bolivia, when she then told me she actually had some chuño from when her father last visited. I was totally fascinated by the whole thing, and nibbled off some of the potatoes she had. They were extremely light, hard as clay rocks, and tasted like potato flour. Travis, her husband, claimed they (chuño) made one nasty dish, which of course made me desperate to try them in a prepared dish.


Well, tonight I got home and Erika had dropped some off some prepared chuño for me! Just what I'd been craving. :)

She had mentioned she usually makes a soup, but this was a sort of stir fried preparation, dark and crumbly, with a very inviting aroma. She had included a mild sort of pico, which I just spooned on top and dug into. The consistency and texture reminded me of a ground beef, mild and meaty, with a slight potato under taste. I'll have to ask her if she cooked it in an animal fat of some sort; there also appeared to be perhaps flecks of scrambled egg thrown in as well. The whole thing was delicious. I ate it so quickly that I couldn't take a pic, and James had only one bite, but now I am dying to have the chuño soup.

I have no idea why Travis doesn't care for the dish. It wasn't tripe-with-ginger and green-onion amazing (I'll eat three plates of that in one dim sum sitting, easy), but it was tasty, comforting and intriguing. I can imagine it makes a great breakfast base, and I just may have to go throw some potatoes out my back door and hope it freezes tonight.