Silpancho

Ingredients

• Beef — thin cuts for pounding600 g
• Breadcrumbs200 g
• Rice300 g
• Potatoes — boiled and sliced600 g
• Eggs4
• Tomatoes3
• Red onion1
• Beetroot — boiled1
• Parsley20 g
• Vegetable oil150 ml
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Pound the meat under film to three or four millimetres. Work from the centre outwards or it tears.

   15 min

2. 2

   Season and press into breadcrumbs with the flat of your hand. No egg wash is used here.

   8 min

3. 3

   Dice the tomato, onion and beetroot small, mix with the parsley, salt and a spoon of oil.

   10 min

4. 4

   Fry the boiled potato slices until golden and keep them warm.

   10 min

5. 5

   Fry the steaks a minute and a half a side in hot oil; meat this thin cooks instantly.

   8 min

6. 6

   Fry the eggs, leaving the yolks runny.

   5 min

7. 7

   Build it: rice, potato, the steak across the whole plate, the egg, and the raw salsa over the top.

   4 min

About the dish

The meat is beaten to a few millimetres thick and to the diameter of a plate. That is literal: a proper silpancho hangs over the edges.

The layers run strictly bottom to top: rice, fried potato, meat, egg, and a raw mix of tomato, onion and beetroot over everything. The order is not decorative — the lower layers take up the yolk.

The dish comes from Cochabamba, the city Bolivians treat as their culinary capital. So does the habit of serving portions nobody can finish.

Worth knowing

• — The crumbs must be fine and dry. Coarse ones fall off thin meat at the first turn.
• — The oil has to be genuinely hot. In warm oil the coating soaks it up and goes soft.
• — Not everyone adds beetroot, but Cochabamba does. It supplies the sweetness an out-of-season tomato lacks.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

810 kcal

Protein

42 g

Fat

36 g

Carbs

82 g

More from Bolivia

• Salteñas — Baked pastries whose filling stays liquid inside. The Bolivian mid-morning snack.