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Chupe
Melt 1 tablespoonful of butter and fry in it I medium sized onion minced with 2 tomatoes, some minced parsley and marjoram; add to this 6 potatoes pared and sliced and stew for five minutes; cover with hot water and add 2 tablespoonfuls of rice; when both are tender beat 1 egg, add to it 1 cupful of milk and stir both into the stew just before serving; lastly, crumble in I small cream cheese.
A one-pot potato and rice stew thickened at the last minute with egg and milk. The whole dish hangs on that final step, so read it first.
- The hinge: the egg must not boilPull the pot off the heat before you stir in the beaten egg and milk, and let it thicken from residual heat only. Return it to a boil and the egg scrambles into threads instead of giving the broth its body.
- "1 small cream cheese"Probably not a block of Philadelphia-style spread. In this period the phrase was often used for a small fresh curd cheese sold by the piece, closer to queso fresco or farmer's cheese. Reckon on a few ounces, crumbled in off the heat so it softens without melting to strings.
- Potatoes and quantitySix potatoes probably means medium boiling potatoes, on the order of 2 lb; the recipe does not say. Waxy varieties hold their slices; russets will break down and thicken the broth further, which is not wrong but gives a different soup.
- Water and rice ratio"Cover with hot water" is unquantified; judge it by the pot, allowing enough to keep the rice moving. The 2 tablespoons of rice are there as a thickener, not a starch course, and will want the better part of twenty minutes' simmering -- which is why the recipe puts it in with the water.
- HerbsMarjoram and oregano are close relatives and are often interchanged; dried oregano may be nearer what a Peruvian or Chilean cook would have used. If using dried, a teaspoon goes in with the onion; fresh parsley is better stirred in near the end.
- FatOne tablespoon of butter for the whole pot is thin by modern habit. Two will carry the onion and tomato properly without changing the character of the dish.
- YieldServes four as a main course, six as a first course. It thickens considerably on standing and will want thinning with milk or water when reheated, again without boiling.
Chupe is the standing name in Peru, Chile and Bolivia for a thick, milk-finished stew built on potatoes, and the word is generally traced to Quechua chupi, soup. The best-known version is chupe de camarones, made with river shrimp, but the form is elastic by design: whatever is at hand goes into the pot, and the constants are potato, a starch or grain, a dairy enrichment and a crumbled fresh cheese at the end. Stripped of shellfish, it still makes a filling meal out of potatoes, a spoonful of rice and a little cheese, and needs no meat at all.