The Challenge

Peruvian & Vegan: Causa Rellena

In my article “Italian & Vegan: Panforte” I told you allready that my Italian guest Mattia lives in Peru. And because he´s such a good cook I asked him to teach me a typical Peruvian dish as well.

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Actually we had kind of a south american cooking evening because his Guatemalan friend Heidi also made some platanos maduros (check out my blog about them – “Costa Rican & Vegan: Platonos maduros“) and Guatemalan tortillas with bean paste, salsa and guacamole *yummy*!!

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The Peruvian dish we made is called Causa rellena which means sth. like filled cause! 😉 It´s pretty typical and was originally a dish for the poor. During the war between Peru and Chile the Peruvian people had not much to eat as you can imagine. What they had were potatoes – the main ingredient of causa rellena. The “rellena” – the filling can be everything you have in the house. There are fillings with chicken and tuna but of course vegetables are a pretty good filling as well.

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We decided to make a mushroom based filling for our Causa rellena. Usually you take yellow potatoes for the potato layers in the dish but we did it with normal ones and it turned out pretty well.

(Vegan) Causa Rellena

  • 1 kg (yellow) potatoes
  • 250 g mushrooms
  • 3 carrots
  • 1 onion
  • 1 zucchini
  • 1 pepperoni
  • 1 lime
  • 3 tomatos
  • olive oil
  • salt & pepper
  • olives (optional)
Peel and cook the potatoes.
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Chop the onion, mushrooms, tomatos, zucchini and carrots. Pour some oil in a frying pan and heat it. Add the onions and fry for about two minutes. Add the rest of the chopped vegetables except the tomatos.
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Wait until the carrots are ready – then add the tomatos. Cook for two more minutes and set aside – that´s the filling of our Causa rellena.
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Chop the pepperoni and blend it together with some oil and the juice of 1 lime. Season with salt and pepper.
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Mash the potatoes when ready and add the pepperoni mixture.
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Take a big form and cover it with plastic wrap. Now you devide half of the mashed potatoes and put the first layer into the form.
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Add the filling as a second layer onto the mashes potatoes. At the top you put the the rest of the mashed potatoes as the third layer.
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Cover with plastic wrap and let the whole thing cool down (at least one hour). Of course you can put the form in the fridge.
Get it out of the form carefully. Unwrap it. Garnish with olives.
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That´s it! Enjoy!
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¡que approveche!
Have a look at our south american feast!
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