Make sure to use organic potatoes; here colorful, strangely shaped native varieties are available which don’t require nasty chemicals, but they can be difficult to find.

Many “locros” are eaten in the Andes, but a superior one which is also wonderfully quick and simple is made from potatoes in Ecuador. Tourists will remember a colorful almost orange soup, thick and creamy (and amazingly with no cream), topped with a thick slice of avocado and, if lucky, served with red chile tamarillo salsa.

I am happy to share my recipe for the favorite of all potato soups.

“Locro de papa” Creamy Ecuadorian Potato Soup

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon annatto oil (gives the characteristic golden hue, but could be left out)
2/3 cup chopped scallion
2 lbs. Yukon gold or other mealy potato, peeled (approx. 6 medium potatoes)
1½ cups milk
6 cups hot water
salt and pepper
1 cup “queso blanco”, crumbled or grated (substitute cow’s milk feta)
(optional – 2 sprigs cilantro)

In a heavy 4-5 qt. saucepan, heat vegetable and annatto oils. Add scallions and sauté over low heat until transparent.

Slice half of the potatoes thinly. Cut the others in 1½ inch chunks. Add all the potatoes to the sauce pan and stir constantly, over médium-high heat for 5-10 minutes until potatoes are somewhat browned and transparent. Let them stick somewhat, that gives flavor.

Add the milk, when boiling add the water, salt and pepper. Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes or until the sliced potatoes have partly disintegrated and thickened the “locro”. (This process can be helped along by mashing some of the potato against the sides of the saucepan with a wooden spoon.)

Just before serving, heat with the cheese and cilantro.
Make sure to top the soup bowl with a thick avocado slice and serve with your favorite salsa.

Makes 4 main dish servings.

On the other hand, corn-raised chickens tend to be fed full of hormones here. Thus wouldn’t it be better to eat free range red meat as opposed to hormone filled white meat, given the production techniques in the Andes?

I’d love to hear your comments because as a nutritionist who grapples with how to proceed in countries with a dearth of research, I’d love to turn these ideas around and see what others are thinking, what others are recommending.

The Pollan book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, has me spellbound, so shocking in its reality of the US food chain. Makes me want to study, in a similar manner, the food systems in the countries of the Andes. Since the lands in the Sierra are not suited to industrial farming (the gorgeous Andes jut up and out, not permitting much mechanization of our volcanic soils), corn and soybeans cannot be the staples of these small countries with jagged terrains. High fructose corn syrup and all of the other horrible “goodies” so necessary to processed food are not produced here, even though a variety of corn (maíz) with kernels as large as the diameter of a dime may have originated here. In the 35 years I’ve lived and eaten and food talked here, I have seen the importance of corn in the diet dwindle. It is still very basic in most traditional dishes, but wheat in the form of white rolls (“pancitos”) and noodles (“fideos”) has definitely captured the paladar of urbanites.

Bueno, all that lead-in to let you know what is flipping around my head these days. Since subsidized corn from the US is bound to be much cheaper than any corn grown locally in the Andes, I wonder what percentage of beef here could be corn-fed….. I suspect most of it is free range, as is cattle in Argentina.

So, all of those studies about the pernicious results of eating red meat, I suspect they were based on corn-fed beef, with all of that delicious and dangerous marbling. This could explain why our ancestors could eat large quantities of red meat and not exhibit the public health symptoms we see these days. Beef is not beef; cornfed is one bad thing, grass fed is another story (“harina de otro costal”) .

I am in the midst of setting up interviews with two large meat producers and hope to get back to you with what I learn about the production techniques here, in this “underdeveloped” country.

And to tantilize your tastebuds I include a favorite soup of mine, made with beef. No, this is not another variation of Sancocho (the Andean versions of “cocidos” in Spain), so prevalent in countries of the Andes and their lowlands. I am sharing the preparation of a soup not known out of the Andes of Ecuador and presently primarily still enjoyed in the countryside. Timbusca’s luscious smooth broth (“caldo”) comes from ground, roasted peanuts and of course there is at least one huge potato in the center of the wide bowl. It’s a wonderfully light and stick to your ribs soup, all at the same time. Two bowls and you’ve had more than dinner!