Lomo saltado

Delicious traditional Peruvian dish of chopped-up beef or lamb, fried potato chips, tomato, and some spices. Usually served with rice. This afternoon, Juan Carlos held a cooking class at the tiny kitchen at Amigos, and 5 of us cooked up and then ate some lomo saltado. It's really quite a simple dish, and it's very easy to make. I'll have to try cooking it up by myself sometime.

Juan Carlos mixing up the spices.

Ingredients

• ½kg of potatoes (and your local Western potatoes won't taste as good as Peruvian potatoes, which are the best in the world)
• ½kg beef or lamb steak
• 2 onions
• 3 tomatoes
• parsley, cumin, and ground chili
• olive oil

Yours truly, trying to look like I’m doing something useful in the kitchen.

Instructions

1. Peel potatoes, and chop into medium-sized chips.
2. Chop the meat into small strips.
3. Finely chop the onions and tomatoes.
4. Fry the potato chips in a saucepan with olive oil, until lightly browned and crisp; then remove from saucepan and let stand.
5. Mix the cumin and chili spices together in a bowl.
6. Pull off the leaves from the parsley, and dispose of the stalks.
7. Begin frying the onion in a saucepan. When lightly cooked, add the tomatoes and spices.
8. Add the parsley to the saucepan.
9. Add the meat strips to the saucepan. Cook until browned.
10. Add the potato chips back in. Cover the saucepan and simmer for 3 mins.
11. Serve hot with rice. ¡Buen Provecho!

The best part of cooking: the eating!