aji de gallina

This is Jovana. She is 20 years old and lives in Carabayllo. Jovana has kindly agreed to be my chef-guru and will teach me to make all sorts of yummy traditional Peruvian dishes. (Carlos arranged the lessons in preparation for our imminent departure; when we leave Peru, we want to be sufficiently stocked with recipes to reproduce the fantastic meals that we've enjoyed here.) Today's lesson is ají de gallina.

Oh, and this is Martina. She belongs to the family, is incredibly soft, and has the cutest teeth. I am already in love with her, but she is only allowing me to touch her because she thinks I'm going to give her more lettuce. Back to ají de gallina...

Ají de gallina, simply stated, is chicken in a cream sauce. Shredded boiled chicken is drowned in a creamy sauce made from ají amarillo, stale bread, soda crackers, and milk. Here's how:

Stage One: Boil Everything

1. In a pot, boil potatoes with their skins on until cooked. Peel and slice in half just before serving.

2. Remove the skin from the chicken and cut into hand-sized pieces. In a second pot, add a lot of salt and boil the chicken until cooked yet still tender. Fish out the chicken and allow it to cool on a plate. Reserve the stock.

3. Remove the seeds and veins from the ají and rinse. In a third pot, boil the ají until the color changes into a paler shade of orange, about 10 minutes.

Stage Two: Soak and Blend Everything

4. Roughly chop the ají and place in a blender. Add chicken stock to the same level as the ají and blend well. Pour out the mixture and set aside.


5. Soak stale bread and soda crackers in equal parts evaporated milk and chicken stock. After 10 minutes of soaking, blend the concoction and set aside.

Stage Three: Put It Together

6. Shred the chicken by hand and set aside.

7. In a big pot, sauté diced onions in oil until translucent. Add the ají mixture and shredded chicken and simmer together for a few minutes. Add the bread-crackers-milk mixture, turn down the heat, and cook for another few minutes.

8. Plate with rice, lettuce, potato, ají de gallina, and olive.

Variations

I suppose any favorite pepper can substitute for ají amarillo, though no other pepper can truly duplicate the ají's unique combination of sweet and tangy. Though we haven't tried this yet, but I imagine that soy milk could be an apt alternative to evaporated milk, particularly for the lactose intolerant. And, of course, there's always fake chicken meat and vegetable stock for those seeking a vegetarian option. I haven't been able to confirm this, but I swear I've tasted peanuts in some versions of the recipe; you can probably add the peanuts at step 4 above.

A note about the ají. Even though the pepper is very spicy with its seeds and veins, the traditional version of this dish is deliberately not spicy. However, if there are no Peruvians around (not that Peruvians don't like spicy, they just don't make ají de gallina spicy), you could leave some veins intact to add a nice kick to the dish.

I am incredibly grateful to have been welcomed into Jovana's home and taught how to cook. For me, this was a privilege and a rare experience. It was also an experience that I actively pursued and could walk away from.

The fact is, the cooking conditions at the house were far from ideal. There was no running water to wash hands, equipment, and food. I was horrified that we used the same chopping board and knife to prepare meat and vegetables, without a thorough washing in between. While I was able to rinse my hands in a bowl, I was only going through the motions of food safety because there was no bacteria killing soap or alcohol available.

In a recent lecture by Dave Gordon on the human right to health, he mentioned the inverse care law, a term coined in the 1970s by a Welsh doctor. The inverse care law describes "the general observation that the availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the needs of the population served. This means the poorest tend to get the worst care and the least of it." This law, I can see, also applies to preventing illness. Those with the least means to afford and gain access to quality healthcare tend to live in conditions with the greatest exposure to catching and suffering from illness.

I just don't see why people like me should be able to use gallons of fresh running water to flush a toilet while people like Jovana can't have fresh running water to wash food. In a 1995 report by the World Health Organization, they argued that the greatest killer in the world and the greatest cause of ill-health in the world is poverty. Indeed, "7 out of 10 childhood deaths in developing countries can be attributed to five causes or combination of them: pneumonia, diarrhea, measles, malaria, and malnutrition... All these conditions can be treated for...less than a dollar."

The right to clean water is a right to life. If I think about it in these terms, then it is plain to me that I have not earned more of a right to life than Jovana. Then why is it that things are the way they are?