It’s time for one of those occasional posts on favorite dishes we’ve served at Casa SaltShaker over the last weeks. With, this time, a particular emphasis on the evolution of one dish.

This is one I’ve been playing around with the idea for quite some time. There’s a classic dish from Ayacucho, Perú, called rocotos rellenos – it’s a hollowed out, stuffed rocoto chili, kind of like stuffing a bell pepper, but smaller. It’s usually stuffed with a mix of ground beef, some veggies, potato, herbs, and a lot of cheese. Then it’s topped and surrounded by even more cheese.

It’s kind of a mess. And it’s… a lot of cheese.

Here’s our refined version, after several iterations. I core and then blanch and shock the rocotos twice. It removes some bitterness and tones down a little of the fiery heat – you want that as an accent to the filling, not overwhelming it. The filling is a mix of duck leg confit, chopped up, garlic, red onion, tomato, black olive, and pategras cheese – an Argentine cheese fairly similar in flavor to Swiss cheese. The whole thing is seasoned with salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, sugar, rice vinegar, and just a couple of spoonfuls of ají amarillo, yellow chili, puree. It’s then baked in the oven for 20 minutes just before serving. The sauce is a reduced duck stock from the bones of the confit, plus leeks, oregano, salt and pepper, which is then pureed with papaya and papaya seeds, and then strained and emulsified with just a touch of xanthan gum.

This was a first stab at a new dish. A fillet of salmon, cooked sous vide and then seared, served over a beurre blanc, and accompanied by a little tian of cauliflower. The base is cauliflower stems cooked down in milk with garlic, and then pureed with a little cream cheese, smoked salt, and white pepper; then a layer of fried cauliflower florets (cut small); then grated pecorino sardo; and finally a gremolata of chopped parsley, lemon zest, toasted almonds, and chilies.

Some changes to it – I would have liked to stick with the tian presentation, but when you don’t have kitchen staff, constructing something like that solo for multiple diners ends up with everything being cold – so it’s the same cauliflower (slight variation, in the puree I used black garlic instead of fresh garlic), just done as a scoop on the plate. And, I decided to switch up the salmon for sea trout, a little firmer and more flavorful, and not sear it after sous vide-ing it. Finally, I’d found the beurre blanc to be just a little too intense and lemony for the dish, so I went with browned butter seasoned with a little chopped garlic, dried apple, and a hint of paprika, chili powder, and thyme, and all finished with just a squeeze of lemon juice. There’s nothing quite like a good brown butter…. I’m going to have to figure out how to do those tians quickly, because it is a far prettier presentation.

Hand-rolled garganelli pasta. The pasta are tossed with a pecorino sardo cream sauce, and then topped with a ragú of chicken giblets.

Okay, now, on to the star of the post. We start with a mention, somewhere on a social media site, somewhere back a year or so ago, mentioning a chicken fritter, coated in quinua, and served with a passionfruit dipping sauce.

Musing on this, I started thinking about Koli milagu masala, a south Indian dish known in English as Chettinad Pepper Chicken. I first played around with it for a Tamil Nadu festival dinner some thirteen years ago. There, I’d turned the braised chicken dish into a mousse, of chicken breast meat pureed with onion, tomato, ginger, garlic, chili, cinnamon, turmeric, fennel seed, clove, lots of black pepper, and salt, all bound together with egg and cream. I’d wrapped it in crepes and then baked them until golden brown and served them up with a coconut and yogurt raita.

I made a few different versions of that dish, now and again, and at some point reinterpreted it more as a blintz, served with huancaina sauce – a Peruvian puree of yellow chili, walnuts, fresh cheese, milk, and bread (which, I’ve done a few oddball things with over time). The combination of all that worked beautifully, and we brought it back a few times on different menus.

Then came a pasta version. Served up the mousse inside tortellini alongside roasted chicken, fennel, and mushrooms, with a lemon-egg and taratur sauces.

Which, brings us to the latest evolution of this. I’m never 100% sure what to call this shape. It’s sort of a scarpinocc, but not quite, and also not quite agnolotti del plin. I went with the former on the menu. They’re filled with that same pepper chicken mixture.

And we couldn’t waste the chicken skin, so I crisped that up in the oven, and then crushed it.

And, arrived at our dish with all of these elements coming together. We have the pasta filled with the black pepper chicken, served over a huancaina sauce that has some passionfruit pureed into it (the influence of that original post). I was going to go with some crispy fried quinua, or quinua puffs, but again… crispy chicken skin. So the quinua went out the window, so to speak, and the pasta is garnished with crushed chicken skin and finely chopped chives. One of the best pastas I think I’ve come up with in the last year or so. I think if we had a “regular” restaurant, this would have a signature spot on the menu.