Papa Rellena

Some days I get super homesick. Instagram doesnt help when I see all those peruvian accounts showing my favorite food. Most ingredients are hard to find, like the over 200 kinds of potatoes. But one kind of potato can be found here: Old potatoes.

Yes! old potatoes. You know them! when they start getting dry and growing stumps all over. Normal european people toss the away, but in Peru, they are the best potatoes to make "Papa Rellena" what means literally stuffed potato.

i bought some potatoes and let them dry behind a door in my kitchen. 2 weeks! yeah! you can wait until 4 weeks for better results. The drier and weird the look, the better! they should look gross but not have any moss on them or any fluids either.

Ingredients: (for 4)

7 medium size old potatoes
200 grams ground beef or 1 diced aubergine for the vegan version.
1 white onion
1 carrot or as much as you onion amount
3 garlic cloves
16 black olives
2 tbsp tomato paste
​1/2 cup vegetable broth
Oregano
Salt & pepper
Paprika Powder
Olive Oil
Flour or Rice Flour

Lets get stuffed. Sometimes a person gives you are really hard time, but there is always a bright side on every bad situation. The mom of my ex hated me, but gave the greatest tip: Do not boil your potatoes, steam them! Yes, steamed potatoes are way better in texture and flavour, not to mention that they never break as they do in water.

Steam the potatoes for 35 minutes!. Once they are tender peel and press with a fork. I use a potato press, works wonders as I dot have to peel the crap out of them.

In a pan, fry the diced onions, garlic and carrots until they are transparent and tender. Add the meat or diced aubergine, paprika powder and tomato paste. When the meat is cooked, add the broth and olives and let it simmer until the liquids are all gone. Add salt and pepper to the meat mix and the potatoes and let them cool down.

Now we start building them. Take a quarter of the potato with your hand (full with flour) and press the potato to an oval flat form. Add a big spoon of the filling and roll the potato over it until you made a cocoon. Feel free to add as much flour as you need. It gets sticky, so use a lot of flour.

Add a lot of rice flour to a dish and place them using baking paper to separate them. In my house they used to put them in the freezer for an hour to make them a bit more "solid". Then In a hot pan with a lot of olive oil, fry the potatoes until they are golden. You can use a deep fryer as well.

Serve with some rocoto sauce or sriracha mayo and some salsa if you want it even more spicy! I used 1 spoon vegan mayo and half spoon of peruvian chili paste.