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Aji de Gallina (Creamed Spicy Chicken)
Aji de Gallina (Spicy Creamed Chicken)
Every time I go Stoned Souping in downtown Denver, I eat at my favorite restaurant, Los Cabos, a small Peruvian joint with absolutely amazing food. I know because I’ve eaten almost the entire menu. They have excellent ceviches, really tender aji de panca spare ribs, Seco de carne, Peruvian chicken and rice, whol roasted fish, and so much more. I was just recently there a week ago. One of my favorite menu items is called Aji de Gallina; spicy creamed chicken. The chicken is shredded and cooked in a spicy creamy sauce. The sauce is thickened with milk soaked bread, walnuts, and cheese puréed with sautéed onions, garlic, and aji amarillo peppers. The yellowish color comes from these peppers, which tastes like a spicy yellow bell pepper. It is hard to find this pepper in this country. You might be able to find it at a Latin grocery store. What you can find is the pepper in paste form. The chicken is traditionally served with boiled yellow potatoes, steamed rice, and is garnished with hard boiled eggs and black olives. Olives happen to be one of the only food items I despise. Please add them in if you are a fan. But you’ll never see them on any recipe on my site.
Ingredients
- 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
- 4 cups chicken stock
- 4 slices white bread
- 1 cup evaporated milk
- 3 tbsp walnuts
- 3 tbsp queso fresco cheese
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 medium white onion diced
- 1 head garlic peeled
- 1/2 cup aji amirillo paste
- 4 cooked red or yellow potatoes sliced
- 3 hard boiled eggs sliced
Instructions
- Place the bread and evaporated milk in a bowl. Let sit for 15 minutes.
- While the bread is sitting in the milk, poach the chicken breasts in the chicken stock for 15 minutes.
- Remove the chicken breasts and let cool completely. Save the stock.
- Heat up vegetable oil in a large sauce pan over medium high heat. Add in the onions and garlic. Sauté for 5 minutes.
- Add in the aji amarillo paste. Cook for another 5 minutes.
- While the onions and garlic are cooking, add the soaked bread slices, walnuts, and cheese to a food processor or blender.
- Blend until smooth.
- Add the sautéed onions and garlic to the food processor.
- Blend until smooth.
- In the same sauce pan, add in the shredded chicken, the spicy cream sauce, and 2 cups of the chicken stock. Simmer covered on medium heat for 15 minutes.
- Stir in the potatoes. Cook for another 5 minutes uncovered.
- Turn off the heat. Garnish with sliced hard boiled eggs.
Mango Avocado Shrimp Salad
Mango Avocado Shrimp Salad
This is a super simple salad to prepare. Season and sauté the shrimp. Let them cool to room temp. Mix together with mangos, cucumber, avocado, and red onion. Pour over the dressing. Let chill for 30 minutes. That easy. If you want, you can serve this salad with leaf lettuce, but it’s definitely fine on it own.When selecting shrimp, any size will do. If you are going to us shrimp larger than 31/40 count, I like to cut them into 3 so there’s more smaller pieces of shrimp distributed throughout the salad. I used 21/25 count. If you want to leave them whole, that’s fine too. It’s just my personal preference.When choosing mangos, use ones that are ripe but still slightly firm. I used large Haitian mangos.
Ingredients
- 1 lb raw peeled + deveined shrimp
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 large mangos cubed
- 4 persian cucumbers seeded and cubed
- 2 avocados cubed
- 1/2 medium red onion thinly sliced
Dressing
- 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
- 2 tbsp honey
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp cracked black pepper
Instructions
- Mix all of the dressing ingredients together. Set aside.
- If using shrimp larger than 31/40 count, cut into 3 pieces. Season with salt, pepper, and garlic. Let marinate for 10 minutes.
- Heat up 1 tbsp of olive oil in a sauté pan over medium high heat. Add the shrimp in a single layer. Cook for 2 minutes on the first side. Flip and cook for another 2 minutes.
- Remove from the pan to a bowl and let completely cool.
- Mix together the mango, cucumber, avocado, red onion, and shrimp. Pour and toss in the dressing. Let sit in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before serving.
Pork Donkasu
Pork Donkasu
Pork Donkasu is a panko bread pork cutlet that’s fried and covered in a sweet and savory brown gravy. This is very similar to the Japanese version, pork tonkatsu. The Japanese version is simply served over shredded cabbage with a similar brown sauce. The Korean version is served with shredded cabbage with a mayo/sriracha dressing, pickles, steamed white rice with black sesame seeds, and a dinner roll. Sometimes you’ll see a side of macaroni salad. Pork donkasu are traditionally big as fuck. In order to cook properly, the pork needs to be hammered down to 1/4” thick. So if you want a giant donkasu, cut you pork loin chop to 1” thickness. Butterfly the chop so it’s 1/2” thick. Hammer it down on both sides until it is about a 1/4”. If you don’t want a giant donkasu, cut the chop to 1/2” thick and hammer it down to 1/4”. It will be about half the size of the giant donkasu. I obviously made mine the size of a dinner plate.
Ingredients
- 1 lb boneless pork loin
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cracked black pepper
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 3 tbsp flour
- 2 large eggs beaten
- 2 cups panko breadcrumbs
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
Brown Sauce
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1/4 cup onions finely diced
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1/4 cup ketchup
- 1/4 cup worchesterhire sauce
- 1/4 cup chicken stock
- 1 tbsp whole milk
- 1 tbsp sugar
Instructions
- Cut a 1lb chunk of boneless pork loin in half. Butterfly each half like so. Season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
- With a mallet, hammer down the pork loin to 1/4” thick. As you can see in the pic, the pork has doubled its surface are compared to the one that’s not hammered.
- Hammer all over on both sides at least twice.
- Dredge each of the pork cutlets in flour.
- Dip the cutlet in the beaten egg, the the panko breadcrumbs.
- Heat up cooking oil in a large sauté pan over medium high heat. Unless you have a gigantic as fuck sauté pan, you’re going to have to cook these one at a time. Cook for 4 minutes.
- Flip. Cook for another 4 minutes. Drain on paper towel.
- In a small pot over medium high heat, melt the butter. Add the onions. Cook for 5 minutes.
- Add in the flour. Constantly whisk.
- Mix together in another bowl, the Worcester sauce, ketchup, chicken stock, whole milk, and sugar. Add it to the roux. Whisk for 2 minutes until it thickens.
Instead of pickles, I used some pickled shishito peppers that I made. My high ass forgot to make the rice. So I will update the pic sometime in the future. Maybe I’ll add some macaroni salad and a dinner roll? Who knows?
