Ajiaco

Last week Wayne cooked another recipe from the Columbia Restaurant Cookbook.  This time it required a special trip to the Latin supermarket.  I couldn't find tasajo or malanga at Publix!  However, it was a great Friday night date, and after trying two or three different stores we came home with the proper ingredients.

I'm just a bit too lazy to go get the recipe book, so if you want the actual amounts, let me know!  But you start by soaking 1/2 pound of tasajo (or dried beef) overnight.

The next day, drain it, dice it, and combine it with 1/2 pound of fresh beef and 1/2 pound of fresh pork, and brown in some peanut oil.  While that's cooking, prepare all the vegetables.  (You could also save yourself all the peeling and dicing and go to the bodega and buy a bag of ajiaco vegetables.  I'd never even heard of the soup before, but such an item exists!)

Wayne likes peeling and dicing!  He used corn on the cob, green pepper, onion, garlic, sweet potato, butternut squash, yuca, taro, a green plantain and a ripe plantain.  Salt and pepper to taste and stir in a can (8 oz) of tomato sauce and the juice from one lemon.

Cook until it's done, then serve!

I still don't like plantains, but the rest of the soup was pretty good.