Tasty Lomo Saltado! (Peruvian Beef Stir Fry) + Garlic Rice

Lomo Saltado, Anyone? We fell in love with this dish after trying it at the very popular Mario’s Peruvian Restaurant on Melrose. Every time we head over there, we order this particular dish–beef, tomato, red onions, and FRIES!!!! Who would have thunk of stir frying fries into their food? Bloody Brilliant Peruvians!

We decided to give it a try in making this dish, and we have perfected it over the years to suit our taste buds. It’s not that difficult to make, and is a very worthwhile dish to try. For those of you who have not tried this dish before, you will be surprised and hooked on this tasty meal–sweet onions + salt-tangy fries, and juicy meat. . This dish is served with garlic rice and in this entry, we will teach you a very easy way to make garlic rice.

Here it goes!

Lomo Saltado

What You Need:

• French fries
• Steak/meat
• Red Onion
• 1 Tomato
• Soy Sauce
• Rice Vinegar
• Salt and Pepper
• spices to taste–optional

What to Do:

Cut the tomato and Onion like so:

Cut the steak into strips and salt and pepper the meat. During the wait time (~30 minutes, put the fries into an oven and bake. Also, cook some rice in the rice cooker.

Heat up a frying pan to VERY high heat. When the pan is ready, apply oil and cook the steak strips.

When the meat has browned, add in the onions and tomato. Continue to saute.

We like to cook the onions until they are somewhat soft. Once you can see that they are, get the soy sauce, and drizzle it on there. You don’t need much. We would say..oh, about 1-1 and 1/2 tablespoon.

Next, do the same with the rice vinegar. Depending on how much you put the vinegar, your dish will be more or less tangy. We usually use about 1/2 tablespoon of rice vinegar.

We are almost there. At this time, you can add in your various spices–black pepper, cayenne, paprika, etc. This is optional, of course.

Now it’s time for the fries! Here is the picture right after the oven:

Now grab that tray, and gently pour the fries into the pan. Over the years, we found out that the longer we stirred the fries into the mixture, the more soggy the fries would turn out. So, reserve this is step as the last and quickest step. You are just going to add the fries, stir about three times, and turn off the heat.

Oh so Yummy looking! This part is DONE. You can totally now enjoy this by itself…OR read on ahead to make the garlic rice! So easy, we promise!

Garlic Rice Recipe

What You Need:

• Rice (we used basmati)
• Garlic (1-2)
• butter
• lemon juice-optional

What to Do:

Before you make the lomo saltado, cook the rice.

Dice the garlic into small pieces.

Heat up a fry pan and melt the butter.

Add in the garlic. Now this is an optional step. Put in a good squirt of lemon juice.

Now, gently brown the garlic….barely brown. We tilted the fry pan this way so that the garlic would be fully immersed in the butter.

Next, turn off the heat and open up the top of our rice cooker. The rice should already be done. Pour all the contents of the fry pan into the rice container.

Now, stir stir stir.

The garlic rice is done! Can you believe how quick that was? When you taste the rice, you will definitely taste that tint of garlic and butter. Fantastic!

Now that the rice and lomo saltado are done. Plate the two, and enjoy your meal! (they make fantastic leftovers, by the way. ) Thank us later. Bye!

 

Tasty Split Pea Soup

K and I are in a split pea soup craze. These past few months, we have been ordering pea soup at every restaurant that offers pea soup! We’ve had some great ones and some not so great ones. One day after a particularly disappointing pea soup at a restaurant that shall remain anonymous, we decided to try our hand at making the perfect pea soup for us–creamy, hearty, FLAVORFUL. We’re happy to announce that we no longer make trips for split pea soup. Here is our incredibly easy recipe:

What You Need:

• Bacon/ Ham Hock–(I cannot stand the look of ham hock, so we opted for two different types of bacon for flavor)
• Chicken Stock (Recommend about 4 cans)
• 1/2 stalk Celery
• 1/2 Onion
• 2 Garlic
• Green Split Peas
• Butter
• Salt & Pepper

What to Do:

First, let’s chop chop chop the onions, garlic, celery, bacon–we used about 4-6 pieces of bacon and two small slices of Canadian bacon.

Melt about 1 tablespoon of butter on a hot pot and saute the onions, garlic, celery, and bacon together.

Add in 3 1/2 cans of chicken stock.

Add in 3/4 of the 1 lb bag of split peas. Salt and Pepper.

Let mixture come to a boil then simmer for about 2 hours. You’re going to notice the soup become thicker:

Depending on the amount of peas you put in, the thickness of your soup will vary. If you find that the soup is becoming way too thick, add in the rest of the chicken broth. If it’s still thick, you can always add water.

After two hours, the soup is done! You might find that the soup is not 100% creamy. If you want to make it creamy, pour the soup into a blender and blend. This will make the soup very creamy. Enjoy!

 

Nutty Banana Bread

One of our favorite breads to bake and eat is a good ol’ banana nut bread. When we’re too busy to eat breakfast in the morning, we grab a couple slices of these and out the door we go!

What You Need:

• 2 ripe bananas
• 1/2 cup walnuts (optional)
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 stick butter (softened)
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

What to Do:

First preheat the oven to 350. Butter and flour a loaf pan like so:

Next, in a bowl, sift the dry ingredients–flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.

In a separate bowl, mash the bananas with the vanilla extract until it is smooth. Add in the nuts and mix.

In another bowl (we promise, it’s the last bowl!), mix the butter and sugar until the mixture is smooth and fluffy. We’re going to be adding all the other ingredients into this bowl so make sure it’s a big bowl. (notice in our picture we didn’t do that…and we had an oops moment )

Add in the egg into the mixture.

Add in about 1/2 of the dry mixture into the butter bowl and mix. Next add in the mashed banana mixture and mix. After that, add in the other 1/2 of the dry mixture and mix.

Pour the mixture into the floured loaf pan.

Bake the bread for 45-60 minutes. The bread is done when it is golden brown. Stick a chopstick/toothpick in and check if it comes out clean. If it comes out clean, the bread is ready.

Let the pan cool. Slice and enjoy!