In these “pages”, I’ve brought up more than once the traditional Monday soup of northern Peru, particularly around the area where Henry’s from in Trujillo, shambar. The name supposedly comes from the Quechua word cha’ma, which referred to the start of the weekly agricultural cycle after the weekend, i.e., Monday. That seems a bit dubious, as the concept of a Monday to Sunday week, with a weekend, is a very Eurocentric one that wouldn’t have existed prior to the Spanish arriving in Peru. It’s also not the same as the Quechua word for Monday, which is killachau. It may well have referred to the start of the agricultural labors on some sort of cycle that was extant prior to the Spanish conquistadors, and came to later be associated with Mondays with the imposition of the Gregorian calendar. I can buy that.

At its heart, shambar is a soup of, classically, wheatberries, dried peas, dried beans cooked with meats. The original, as best any one has traced it back, seems to be from the Yarowilca province, about 150 km southeast of Trujillo, but as to what that earliest recipe contained, I don’t know, nor do I know if anyone does. Most commonly, the meats, these days, with influences from criollo, or Spanish cooking, along with bits of Amazonian and Andean, include pork skin, pork and/or chicken and/or beef, and some sort of cured meat. Serrano ham or other cured hams are often used for adding a salty note to the dish. Depending on what regional variation, the soup is also flavored with dried chilies, and either hierbabuena (peppermint), huacatay (amazonian black mint), or cilantro.

So, playing around in the kitchen and came up with a version that I’m particularly fond of….

First was the mix of legumes. The wheatberries are a must. I used split peas instead of whole dried peas; white alubia beans – similar to Italian cannelini beans; pallares, or butter beans, and zarandajas, hyacinth beans.

I’m not going to do a step by step here. Just a rough outline. I measured out 200 gm of the wheatberries and 100 gm of each of the others and soaked them in water overnight. Changed the water and boiled them for an hour. Then I added in the other longer cooking ingredients – the rind of some fresh pork belly as the pork skin, the pork belly itself diced up, along with an equal amount (150 gm each) of pork shoulder and Serrano ham. A chopped up carrot, a red onion, a couple of cloves of garlic. And, rehydrated two red ají pancas and 1 yellow aji mirasol, the dried chilies we’ve talked about many a time, pureed and added to the soup. Then it was just simmering away until the meat was tender and the beans cooked through and very soft, about another hour. Seasoned with salt and white pepper. Garnished with chopped up hierbabuena and cilantro, and a mix of cancha, the toasted and salted corn kernels that are a common garnish in Peruvian cooking, plus a little touch of deep-fried corn kernels dusted with cayenne.

And, served up this last weekend to our guests to much acclaim.