Lessons in Cooking- Chuño

Walking through the market with Jeong and Dr. Vasquez (visiting cardiologist from Peru), we were going through all sorts of herbs, grains, and pasta.  We arrived at large bags of seeds, flours, and little nuggets that looked honestly like dried terds.

"Chuño!", exclaimed Dr. Vasquez.  He explained the freeze-dried potatoes, used by the ancient Incan civilization of the Andean Plateau (aka altiplano) at around ~12,000 feet.  Per Wikipedia, it is a five-day process, obtained by exposing a frost-resistant variety of potatoes to the very low night temperatures of the Andean Altiplano, freezing them, and subsequently exposing them to the intense sunlight of the day.

So of course I bought half a kilogram at $0.75, having no earthly idea what to do with them.  "Soak them in regular water" said Dr. Vasquez.  "They will expand into a potato, like the size of a fist."  Impressive!

     

Chuño before, next to a dried lime

 

Chuño after a 24-hour soak

Needless to say, after a day of soaking I was not impressed.  Silly me- I had been afraid the glass might break if it expanded too much!  Anyways, Omar's mother said to soak, skin, then boil the potatoes, so maybe that will be a cooking adventure for next week...