Bolivia

Menu: Silpancho & mocochinchi | Recipe Source: foreignfork.com and hispanicfoodnetwork.com

A crispy beef patty, a scoop of white rice, fried potato rounds, a runny egg, and vinegary tomato-onion salsa. Those are the bones of silpancho, and if you’re like me and love all of those foods individually, believe me when I tell you that they’re even more lovable when they’re all mixed together on one heaping platter. I still can’t decide if it’s the egg, the potatoes, the frying, or the plating of it all, but when I first came across silpancho, something about it screamed “hangover cure” to me. For that reason, I immediately assumed it was a breakfast dish, and while it turns out that silpancho is a prized Bolivian lunch and dinner special, I really think they should look into serving it in the morning because if I wandered into a diner dehydrated and fighting a headache and saw it on the menu, it would feel like someone was throwing me a life preserver. Needless to say, I loved this one; and while I don’t know if I’d make it again in its entirety, I will absolutely be making the spiced beef and breadcrumb patties and the salsa again in the future!

The mote con huesillos that I made for Chile was one of my favorite drinks to come out of this project, so when I saw that Bolivia’s national drink also involved dried peaches, cinnamon sticks, and oranges, it was an automatic yes for me. That being said, while the ingredient lists for the two beverages are nearly identical, the resulting drinks are surprisingly varied. The most obvious change up with mocochinchi is the absence of the wheat berries that give mote con huesillos half of its name, and while I personally didn’t mind drinking chunks of wheat through a straw*, it was the rich, syrupy maltiness of mote con huesillos that made me keep coming back for more. Those same exact flavors are present in mocochinchi but in a much lighter way (think subtly sweet, summery iced tea vs bubble tea with the sugar kicked up to 100), and I genuinely can’t decide which of the two I like better. The good news? I don’t have to!

*As an avid lover of boba tea, OJ with extra pulp, and those aloe juices with the jelly cubes, encountering chunks in a beverage is rarely a red flag for me.

Ready to cook?

Silpancho (link): Aside from adding a little salt to the tomato/onion/parsley mixture, I followed this recipe exactly.

Mocochinchi (link): I followed this recipe exactly too!