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Summary

Prep Time 20 mins
Cook Time 40 mins
Total Time 1 hr
Course Soup
Cuisine European
Servings (Default: 6)

Ingredients

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Also: for variants:

Don Diego`s Sopa De Maní
Don Diego`s Sopa De Maní
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Instructions

  1. Two things in advance:
  2. First, we owe even the peanut to the Incas.
  3. Second, the Incas did not have cable television. Consequence: The Incas did not succumb to the Ültje-Kültje.
  4. To do this, they invented loads of peanut dishes. So they made a peanut cream - long before the Americans - but didn`t know where to smear it because they lacked the sticky white bread. Then again they missed the right word for a candy made from cocoa, honey and peanuts. Snickers is probably not part of the Quechua vocabulary. But why dwell on yesterday`s missed opportunities? Sopa de maní, the peanut soup, is still popular today in the Andean countries of Bolivia, Perú and Ecuador.
  5. The countless variations of this traditional Andean dish have the following ingredients in common:
  6. Peanuts, potatoes, broth and peppers. Otherwise the dish can turn out very differently, sometimes more as a soup and sometimes more as a stew. I present a creamy version of the soup.
  7. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and steam the onion cubes until they are soft and translucent. Then fry the garlic, carrots, peppers and potatoes for a good five minutes before adding the tomatoes.
  8. In the meantime, the peanuts were toasted in a pan and dry, i.e. without the addition of fat. Fresh peanuts are practically white and only take on their usual can or bag color when they are toasted. When toasting, do not set the temperature too high and stir and turn the peanuts constantly so that they do not burn.
  9. Then we allow both the vegetable mix and the peanuts to cool down for ten minutes before we process both.
  10. Pour the toasted peanuts into the food processor and grind them finely. There is no need to use flour, fine semolina is completely sufficient. When you are satisfied with the result, add the steamed vegetables and puree them with the peanuts.
  11. Now the peanut / vegetable puree comes back into the large pot, is topped up with the broth and is then allowed to simmer for a quarter of an hour. But that`s not done yet. Even if the cook likes the consistency of the soup, the seasoning still has to be adjusted. The peanut soup is eaten spicy in the Andes. In addition to salt and pepper, I season the soup with Ají Amarillo, a pleasant type of peppers from the Andes, to the level that I like. Ají Amarillo is available locally as a fresh pod and in Germany possibly as a paste or dried and ground. But of course other pepper sauces are also suitable.
  12. As a vegetarian variant, I serve the soup with straw potatoes (Batata palha), fried potato sticks out of the bag.
  13. If you don`t want to do without meat, you can add a few pieces of chicken breast to the soup in the final phase.
  14. Both solutions are probably still far too soupy for a Latin American. In addition to the free-swimmer chicken breast, he treats himself to two cooked potato halves and a carrot knob, thus creating his own private archipelago on his plate.
  15. But all eaters have the same task: the lake must be drained.