Tallarín Saltado

Tallarin Saltado via blog.travelpod.com

One of the things I wanted to learn while living in Peru was how to prepare Peruvian dishes. Peruvian food is called criolla, the Spanish word for creole, because it's a fusion of Spanish, Andean, African, Italian, and Chinese influences.

I never got around to cooking much Peruvian food while I was actually living there because I always ate Peruvian over at other people's houses and when I was in my own home, I wanted the food and flavors I knew best. To be quite honest, I'm not a huge fan of some Peruvian cuisine, especially the popular dishes with heavy sauces and lots of meat and potatoes and rice. 

That said, I absolutely love some dishes like lomo saltado and tallarín saltado. Basically, they're stir fry, saltado, with lots of veggies. 

Poor Cookie Monster. That’s pretty much exactly how

a Peruvian feels about veggies.

Peruvians don't eat much vegetables. What you get instead of a side of veggies are a side of potatoes (French fries or potato purée or boiled yam) and rice. I have never eaten so much rice and potatoes in my life. So whenever I had a meal with veggies, let me tell you, I was practically in heaven. I'd go to a buffet for lunch just to pick out all the dishes with veggies and load them on my plate.

At home in Lima, if I made myself something Peruvian, it was soup because it was cheap and easy to make and full of veggies. So now that I'm back in the U.S., I'm trying to venture out and make my favorite Peruvian dishes. 

First on the list is Tallarín Saltado, translated as noodle stir fry, which is a mix of Chinese (soy sauce, ginger) and Italian (spaghetti) and Andean (aji rocoto, or pepper, specific to Peru). 

Aji rocoto, a very spicy pepper from Peru

Fresh Peruvian aji isn't available in the supermarkets, though perhaps you may find it at a Latin market that offers more than Mexican or Caribbean foods. There's one here in San Diego that I've been meaning to check out--I heard it has a lot of fruit from Peru. So maybe they have aji there, too. 

Anyway, the Tallarín Saltado that I made last night was tasty enough, but it wasn't quite as flavorful as what I'd find in Lima.

That said, try it anyway, as I think you'll really enjoy it. It's super easy to prepare, doesn't take long, and offers veggies, protein, and complex carbs, if you use whole wheat spaghetti instead of white.

Enjoy!

Tallarín Saltado
Recipe modified from My Life in Peru


Ingredients

• 16-oz. spaghetti noodles, boiled and drained, tossed with a little oil to prevent sticking (I prefer whole wheat linguine)
• 1/2-lb. of beef or chicken, cut into bite size cubes (my mom pointed out that shrimp would be great in this, too)
• 1 large red onion, cut in half, then cut lengthwise into 1/4″ strips
• 2 ripe tomatoes, cut in half, then each half cut in thin wedges
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 5 green onions, cut in 1/2-in. pieces
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• about 1 teaspoon of thin strips of ginger – optional
• 1/2 small aji rocoto, sliced into extremely thin strips if fresh, or 1 teaspoon of paste if you can find it in a jar – optional
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. In a large frying pan or wok, stir-fry the meat or chicken in oil for about 2 minutes.
2. Add the onion and tomato and aji. Stir fry another minute.
3. Add the vinegar, soy sauce and ginger. Stir fry together 1 minute.
4. Now add the noodles and chopped chives, and mix everything together well. Stir fry 1 or 2 minutes more.

Serve on large plates, garnish with a bit of parsley or a little more chopped chive.