SOUTH AMERICA

2020. Yikes. Let’s leave it at that.

Instead, let’s talk about what’s getting us through this year. The comforts in our homes, and the constants in our lives that serve as life rafts. For us, and countless others, food has been the source of comfort and consistency in our lives as we navigate restriction and change. Food transcends language and tells our stories and history. As many of us have realized, it lets us cross oceans and borders from our own kitchens.

 

We’re done with being controlled by stress and fear. We’re taking it one day at a time, and when it’s time for dinner, one country at a time. Every week, we’re making dishes from a different country, trying to be respectful and follow traditions, and waiting for the day we can go try the real thing. You ready? Because it’s time for dinner.

 

For Week 1, we’re in Peru. In coastal South America, we’re already navigating the meat heavy diets. (Trying to be as upfront as we can, this is a vegetarian household. Sorry.) However, we quickly stumbled upon a classic Peruvian dish that relies on tubers - causa. Essentially, causa is a layered potato casserole that came about during the War of the Pacific in the 1800s. It was developed as a way to feed the Peruvian army, that would make use of limited resources for provisions. There are many variations, but every rendition of causa involves layers of mashed potato and avocado. For ours, we layered cumin spiced potatoes, sweet potatoes with cinnamon and aji amarillo, and avocado.

 

Trust us when we say, we are obsessed with causa now. It can be served cold or room temperature, and each layer provides a different element that creates an extremely balanced dish. We also topped it with a salsa criolla for texture, which made it a total serve.

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08/09/2020