Bolivia: Salteñas, Sopa de Mani and Helado de Canela
Welp, some days things just don’t go as planned, but in the end it all worked out! Some of the issues I ran into: 1) I had a reallllly hard time finding raw peanuts for the Sopa de Mani. 2) The salteñas didn’t turn out nearly as pretty as I’d hoped. And 3) I burned the cocadas that I had originally planned to make! But even with all these setbacks, I still really enjoyed these dishes and had fun cooking them!
Bolivia is a central South American country, bordered by Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Peru and boasts multiple different climates and terrains. Most notably, the Andes Mountains, the Atacama Desert and the Amazon Basin rainforest. You may also have heard of Lake Titicaca, which is the second largest lake (after Lake Maracaibo) in South America and lies on the border of Bolivia and Peru!
Salteñas are Bolivian empanadas and are filled with chicken, peppers, potatoes, olives, eggs, raisins, sugar and… gelatin! Weird combo, right? But actually so so delicious. Somehow all those flavors combined into the most amazing sweet and savory empanada that were SO addicting! I also loved the empanada dough- it’s flavor and yellow coloring is from the urucú (achiote/annatto), and something about it was sooo good.
I will say, as much as I loved the empanada dough, it was a bit hard to work with and I had a hard time getting the salteñas to look pretty. I’ve realized through this cooking process that I’m just not the best baker. My baking instincts aren’t great and I don’t know how things are supposed to look and feel. Maybe the dough was supposed to be really hard, but I honestly wouldn’t know and was disappointed with my shaping skills lol.
The Sopa de Mani, or peanut soup, was veryyyy peanut-y… and carb-y haha! It had lots of potatoes, peanuts, beef and roasted macaroni, so it was very filling. I would say that I liked this soup, but didn’t love it. It was extremely heavy and after a while the flavor got a little old (I had a ton of leftovers, which may have been the problem!).
Lastly, I made helado de canela! Originally I was supposed to be featuring the cocadas (coconut macaroons with sesame seeds) but since I burned them, I had to make something different for dessert. I’d never made sorbet before so I thought it’d be fun to try! It ended up being super easy it’d be fun to experiment with other fun flavors. For this variation, you basically just boil sugar, water and cinnamon, then add cornstarch and lemon and freeze!
Overall, even though I got off to a rough start, I’d call this meal a success!
