Ajiaco

Photos by Pablo Salgado

Ajiaco is a chicken and potato soup, and a regional variation on the better-known sancocho. It originates from Colombia’s capital, Bogota, in the Altiplano region of the country. This region lies 2,600 meters above sea level, making a warming winter broth a suitable local favourite. The key ingredient in the soup is guasca, a herb only produced in the area from which ajiaco originates. It is this herb that gives the dish its distinct flavour.

In the Altiplano, there is less variety in the crops available than in Colombia’s warmer regions. Consequently, whereas sancocho is made with a variety of different vegetables and tubers, the recipe for ajiaco typically uses three or four different types of potato, with each providing different tastes and textures.

SABOR’S AJIACO
(Chicken and potato soup from Bogota)

Serves: 4

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Cooking time: 1 hour

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts
3 cloves of garlic
2 red onions
salt to taste
2 litres of chicken stock
12 small yellow potatoes (also known as papa amarilla, yellow potatoes can be found in South American shops in Brixton, Elephant and Castle and Seven Sisters)
2 corn cobs, cut in half
4 medium white potatoes, peeled and cut into 5mm slices (new potatoes or jersey royals are ideal)
4 purple potatoes, peeled and cut into 5mm slices (also known as truffle black potatoes, purple potatoes can be found in the supermarket. Red potatoes can be used instead, as they also retain their shape when cooked) 1 bunch of spring onions
1 bunch of coriander
8 tablespoons of guasca (this herb can be found dried in Brixton, Elephant and Castle and Seven Sisters; soak the dried herbs in water before use to get a more aromatic flavour)
250 ml of double cream or sour cream
4 tablespoons of capers, drained
2 avocados, peeled, pitted and thinly sliced

Method
First, marinade the chicken breasts with the salt, onions and garlic and leave over night.

The next day, place the chicken breasts into a heavy 4-litre casserole dish. Add water, cover the dish and cook until the chicken is tender. When cooked, remove the chicken from the dish. Remove the skin from the chicken and discard. Cut the chicken into strips.

Cook the yellow potatoes in the casserole dish with the chicken stock, until the potatoes start to disintegrate. At this point the soup should be thick and fairly smooth.

Add the spring onion, coriander, sliced white and purple potatoes, guasca and corn halves to the soup, and continue cooking.

When cooked, remove the bunches of spring onions and coriander.

To serve, divide the chicken strips between four deep bowls and pour over the soup. Dress each bowl with 3 tablespoons of cream and 1 tablespoon of chopped capers. Place the slices of avocado over the top, and serve.

Caipirinha

The caipirinha is the national drink of Brazil. Its main ingredient is cachaça, which is a wonderfully sweet sugar cane rum.

1 lime, quartered

2 teaspoon brown sugar

50 mls cachaca

Chill a rocks glass with cracked ice. Place the lime quarters in the bottom of a mixing glass; add the sugar, and muddle, extracting the juice and the oil in the skin from the lime quarters. Add the cachaca to the mixture in the mixing glass, dump the ice from the rocks glass into the mixing glass, and shake well. Pour the entire contents of the mixing glass back into the chilled rocks glass and serve. We can have as many variations as you like, just replace some of the lime juice with another fruit.

Pisco Sour

Peru and Chile both claim that the pisco sour is their invention.. What is known, is that the Peruvians they blended it. Pisco is a grape brandy made from the muscatel grape.

50 ml Pisco

25ml of egg white

1 or 2 depending on taste teaspoon of sugar

25ml of fresh lime juice

Angostura bitters (optional)

Crushed ice

Place the Pisco, egg white, sugar, lime juice, and ice in a cocktail shaker or a blender . Shake vigorously. Strain into a martini glass and add the bitters. You can also serve in an old fashion whisky glass as we do it at Sabor.

Mojito

Invented long ago in Havana’s Bodeguita Del Medio bar in Havanna, this drink has been enjoyed by Cubans for generations.

2 tender sprigs of fresh mint

2 teaspoons of caster or brown sugar

30mls fresh lime juice

50mls Havana Club Anejo

Soda water

Muddle one mint spring with the simple syrup or sugar and the lime juice in the bottom of a mixing glass. Add the rest of the ingredients and shake with ice. Strain over cracked ice over the highball glass, top with soda, and garnish with the remaining spring of mint.

Margarita

No one knows who invented the margarita. Its origins are as mysterious as the pyramids, but with more hangovers. Margaritas are pretty ubiquitous, and you can get them from some horrible frozen margarita machine, one of my pet hates!!!!!! But the real deal is so much better. Stop buying that horrible day-glo green mix and go back to the basics:

50mls tequila

25mls Cointreau

30mls fresh lime juice

Combine the ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass with a salted rim. Salting the rim: Rim the edges of the cocktail glass by rubbing a lime piece on the outside rim of the glass, then dipping the outside rim into a saucer of course salt.

Cocktails

As the summer peaks, it's time to enjoy the gardens and an opportunity to entertain at home. We get asked a lot for any ideas for a Latin flavoured “trago” or cocktail to spice up the gathering, especially by those expecting South American guests.

The first thing is to think of drinks that would complement the food that will be served and also about your guests drinking preferences, as we Latinos are a diverse bunch. Our different countries have unique customs, aesthetics, and cultural influences. One thing that unites us all though is our love of getting drunk. Let’s face it, the history of Latin America is pretty bleak. If you had been conquered by Francisco Pizarro and Hernan Cortez, kidnapped from Africa to cut sugar cane or lived under a military/communist/fascist dictatorship, you'd want a drink too, so don't blame us, as we also love to have fun.

In Latin American thanks to the weather we can grow a variety of exotic tropical fruits, and this has helped us to come up with some pretty fun cocktails. A lot of men think cocktails are for girls, but the recipes we use at Sabor, that I'm going to share with you in the next few postings, can be enjoyed by anyone without fear.

Carmenere

Running a restaurant I get asked a lot about recommending wines, as our wine list is mainly South American. I drink a lot of these types of wines, even though at home I tend to have a broader choice, late last year for instance we drank lots of French wines, inspired by a trip to the Loire Valley and Bordeaux.

I get very impressed by the quality of wine production both In Argentina and Chile, every year we see at the International wine fair more boutiques wineries showcasing their wines. There is more emphasis in the quality rather than the quantity we saw in the nineties, but lets remember that South America produces more vine varietals than Malbec.

Carmenère, Chile's accidental gift to the world of wine, has been described as both things. Whatever you think of that country's most controversial grape, it's amazing that, until 1994, Carmenère didn't exist in South America. Or rather it did, but no one knew it was there.

When a visiting French academic called Jean-Michel Boursiquot identified Chile's Merlot plantings as Carmenère, it caused general consternation. Had some dodgy Del Boy nurseryman substituted one for the other back in the mid-19th century? The more prosaic truth was that, in those days, many vineyards were co-planted as so-called field blends. Maybe Carmenère adapted better than Merlot.

The more immediate problem facing the Chileans was that their 'Merlot' sold very well, thank you, largely because it tasted of Carmenère. So what should they do? Own up about the difference between the two, go on as before by misleading wine drinkers, or just fudge the issue?

The official statistics suggest that the issue has been resolved. Out of Chile's 115,000 hectares, Merlot allegedly has 11.5 per cent and Carmenère 6 per cent. But the figures are pure fantasy. There was very little real Merlot (called Merlot Merlot by Chileans to differentiate it from Merlot Chileno, or Carmenère) planted before the mid-Nineties, and Peter Richards, author of The Wines of Chile, reckons that somewhere between 50 and 80 per cent of the combined total is actually Carmenère.

The issue here is one of integrity. Many Chilean companies continue to label blends that are dominated by Carmenère as Merlot. It is perfectly legal to include up to 15 per cent of the former, but I think that economic imperatives - Merlot is the more famous name, despite the fact that it rarely produces great wine outside Bordeaux - have made them parsimonious with the truth.

These days there is a growing number of own-up Carmenères on the market, Here at Sabor we loved the ones produced by Julio Bouchon, which has some notes of chocolate, peppers and green tobacco, in combination with ripe fruits like cherry and plums. I recently found the amazing Antun Ninquen Carmenere and Cabernet Sauvignon blend, that was the clear stand-out of 25 wines we tasted one long evening, and we were happy to add it to our wine list.