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- La Paz native Lilian Zamorano cooks a Bolivian feast Linda Bladholm, The Ethnic Explorer
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- ANDEAN SPECIALTIES: Aji de trigo, empanadas saltenas and lauchas, and fricase.
- Lilian Zamorano is grinding maroon aji panca in the blender when the oven timer rings in the kitchen of her Kendall condominium. Out comes a cookie sheet of cunapes, puffy little breads made from yuca starch, Large eggs and cheese.
- 'I miss Bolivia, but not cooking at 12,000 feet,' she says, scraping down the chili puree. Born in La Paz, Zamorano is from the highland region known as the Altiplano, one of the highest inhabited areas in the world.
- Landlocked Bolivia, named for its liberator, Simon Bolivar, is surrounded by Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Peru. It was once part of the Inca Empire and called Alto Peru.
- Zamorano left in 1971 with her two young sons, arriving in Washington, D.C., as an attache with the Bolivian embassy. Newly divorced, she was ready to start a new life. When a revolution back home knocked her out of a job eight months later, she decided to stay. She worked for the next 25 years at the World Bank.
- 'I had never cooked before - when I first arrived I didn't even know how to boil a potato, I only baked as my mother had,' she said. She learned from food columns and cookbooks, including a Bolivian one. Her sons encouraged her and soon she was bringing her creamy peanut, chili and cheese huancaina dip to parties.
- After retiring five years ago, she returned to La Paz, but missed America and her sons. She sold everything but her books and art collection and moved two years ago to Miami, where one of her sons lives.
- Bolivia's food is influenced by its Andean neighbors but has distinct specialties in each of its nine states. Staples are potatoes (there are over 300 varieties), chuno (freeze-dry white and black potatoes), sweet potatoes, pork, beef, the super-grain quinoa, trigo pelado (hulled wheat kernels), aji amarillo (yellow chili) and aji colorado (also known as the panca chili).
- The cheese puffs are a typical breakfast food often eaten with api, a thick purple corn drink. Llauchas, from Bolivian friend and caterer Susy Murillo, are a breakfast empanada made from a yeasty pizza-like dough stuffed with cheese sauce.
- Empanadas saltenas are plump and yellow, the dough tinted with aji amarillo and stuffed with a mix of seasoned minced meat and gelatin. It coagulates and melts when baked, creating a juicy filling which bursts in your mouth.
- At the stove, Zamorano is sauteing onions for aji de trigo, a hearty chupe
- (stew). Cubes of sirloin, minced celery, carrot, parsley, red chili puree and tomatoes go in next, then boiled wheat kernels and potato chunks, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper. This is served with hot rolls and fricase, a pork stew in a warm aji amarillo sauce thickened with bread crumbs.
- Dessert is walnut cake iced with dulce de leche and decorated with walnut halves and an unusual quiona pudding studded with slivered almonds and currants and topped with a hot, sweet, wine sauce or possibly meil de chancaca (fig-flavored cane syrup). It tastes all the sweeter cooked at sea level with a view of palm trees.
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