Anne McAlpine: February 10, 2022

Kaitlyn Clark, one of our editors, recently told me about a new dish that she tried called lomo saltado. Kaitlyn has always been a fan of Mexican/Latin American food, with tacos and nachos being a couple of her favourites. Kaitlyn’s husband, Manny, is from Los Angeles and his family is from the Puebla region of Mexico. Lomo saltado is a dish that her husband is very familiar with and loves as he is a huge fan of Peruvian food. It can be made using a regular oven, but a toaster oven is good too, as it is only needed for the fries. You could do it all on the stove top if you fried your potatoes in a pan or pot. Molcajete mixto is another recipe that Kaitlyn shared and I will definitely be giving you that one as it, too, looks like a very interesting and delicious one.  

A fun fact, according to the information Kaitlyn found, is that lomo saltado originated as part of the chifa tradition, the Chinese cuisine of Peru, but its popularity made it part of the mainstream culture. This is why it uses both potatoes (originating from Peru) and rice (originating from China), and both aji amarillo/chili paste and soy sauce. It essentially ends up being a Latin American stir fry, so it’s a fun fusion.

Kaitlyn didn’t have red onion on hand, so she used white onion. She said that the next time she makes it she will use two tomatoes, as they really liked them in the dish. 

The cilantro can easily be skipped if you don’t like it, and they also used less fries (half a small bag of spiced frozen fries), so it didn’t take up so much of the dish. Kaitlyn hadn’t found aji amarillo paste yet, so she substituted with another chili paste. Aji amarillo is a mild pepper, so the next time she makes it she would use less of the chili paste as she found it was a bit spicy. Manny also suggested adding other vegetables if you prefer.

Another recipe that Kaitlyn saw said to marinate the steak first in cumin, salt, pepper, 4 tablespoons of vinegar, a tablespoon of olive oil, and four tablespoons of soy sauce for 10 minutes before straining and cooking, instead of adding the vinegar and soy sauce at the end. She told me that the next time she would try that just to see if there’s a difference.

I have not tried this yet, but it is a dish that I hadn’t heard of previously and I will certainly be trying it. Thanks Kaitlyn for sharing this with us.