Ajiaco Bogotano
Ingredients:
4 Appetizer Servings
- 1 chicken breast
- 1 onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- Chicken stock
- 1 ear of corn, cut into rounds
- 2 whole green onions
- 1/4 bunch cilantro
- 8 small red potatoes
- 4 medium yellow or Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and sliced
- 4 T julienned guascas (stems removed)
- 1/2 cup heavy cream, for serving
- 1 tablespoon capers, drained, for serving
- 1 avocado, thinly sliced, for serving
- Salt
Directions:
- The night before, marinate the chicken breast with onion, garlic, and salt.
- In a medium stockpot, place 5 cups of water, the chicken breast, green onions, cilantro, and salt. Cover, bring to a boil over medium heat, and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Uncover, remove and set aside the chicken breasts, and discard the green onions and cilantro. In another pan, add the yellow potatoes to the chicken stock and simmer for 1 hour.
- Add the red potatoes, the corn, and the guascas, and simmer uncovered until cooked. Season with more salt and pepper and serve with the chicken (cut into strips).
- Serve with the capers and avocado on top and cream on the side.
Hindsight:
This soup simmers on the stove for a long time, and it takes a careful eye to keep the broth from evaporating too much. In the end, ours was more stew than soup. Also, we think that using chicken stock made from bouillon cubes could remedy this problem—keep adding more stock until everything floats.
The leftover juices from the sobrebarriga would be an impeccable stock for the soup.
We were told in order to truly call our soup ajiaco we would need something called guascas. Unfortunately, guascas only grows in Bogota and is near
impossible to find outside Colombia. Paul’s mom instructed us to
substitute capers, not sure how this compares.
Summary:
We can’t wait to get down to Bogota and try the real thing.