Heart & Bowl: Taste memory

When you cook food that you’re accustomed to — ceviche, scrambled eggs — the combination of flavors seems obvious. Lime and cilantro complement fresh tilapia, tomato, and shrimp perfectly. Toast and bacon sit alongside your morning eggs like old friends.

But when you travel to another place, you might find combinations you’d never considered. In Vietnamese cooking, raw vegetables like bean sprouts, lime and hot peppers are often coupled with hot cooked noodles or seafood soup. Spring rolls are wrapped with lettuce leaves, and whole shrimp, cold noodles, peanuts and fresh mint are tucked inside.

Discovering these different traditions and the reasons why they emerge — available ingredients, weather, seasonal crops — is one of my favorite parts of traveling. While you might not be able to take the dishes themselves with you, you can learn the recipes and make them yourself when you get home.

When I spent a summer teaching in Calca, Peru I lived with a host family that had limited economic means but serious talents in the kitchen. They could transform simple ingredients into something extraordinary.

My favorite dish I ate at the home was papas a la huancaina (wan-kah-yee-nah), a satisfying yet light meal that could be served for lunch or dinner. This dish originated in Huancayo, Peru, and the exact recipe seems to vary from household to household. Its basic components are lettuce, boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, black olives, tomatoes, and a rich, spicy pepper sauce. It’s definitely not a combination I could have ever imagined, and I’ve never tasted anything quite like it in the U.S.

I’ve read that this recipe was originally created by a woman selling lunch to workers in the Huancayo area, but the origins of the recipe are disputed.

On one of my last days in Calca, I asked my host mother to teach me how to make the dish. We went to the market and bought peppers, tomatoes and eggs. The rest of the ingredients could be found at home — one of the reasons this recipe is so easy and economical.

The base ingredients of the dish are simple enough, but the creamy sauce seems to marry all the flavors together. You can vary the amount of habañero pepper you put in depending on how spicy you want it. Just keep tasting the sauce along the way and add a little more garlic or a few more peanuts, depending on what you like best. Remember, every household in Peru has their own take on this delicious meal.

Papas a la Huancaina

10 Yukon gold potatoes, boiled for 20 minutes with skin removed

1 yellow bell pepper

2 large cloves garlic, minced

1 small habañero pepper

1/3 cup roasted salted peanuts

¼ cup feta cheese or queso fresco

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

Boston or romaine lettuce

5 ripe roma tomatoes

20 black olives

5 eggs, hard-boiled.

Wash all vegetables. Thinly slice the yellow bell pepper and sauté in two tablespoons oil with garlic over medium heat until soft.

Using a blender or small food processor, blend yellow pepper and garlic with one tablespoon oil. Add peanuts, a tablespoon at a time, and continue to blend until smooth. Add the cheese and blend. Now add a small sliver of the habañero pepper and blend again until completely combined. Be sure no visible chunks of the habañero remain, as it is extremely hot. Sample the sauce to check if you’d like it to be any spicier. If desired, continue to add more habañero until it is spicy enough for you.

Cut tomato and eggs into quarters. Arrange five plates with four slices of tomato, four slices of egg, four olives, several lettuce leaves, and two potatoes on top. Pour sauce over the potatoes on each plate. Serves five.