"Charquicán with cochayuyo"... 🤔???

My favorite meal is "Charquicán with cochayuyo". This recipe is a mixture of vegetables inside mashed potatoes and pumpkin with a Chilean seaweed called "cochayuyo" all topped with a fried egg.

My grandmother lives on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, in the "Costa Blanca" village, located 20km south of the city of Constitución. As she lives alone, we always visit her, and in this place, there is an abundance of “cochayuyo” seaweed and others seafoods. For this reason, my family has a long tradition with seafoods and seaweeds recipes. My father, who lived there for many years, because of this he learned to “mariscar” at a very young age. “Mariscar” is a collected seafoods, shellfishs and seaweed. He goes to collected with low tide, in the early morning, under moonlight. In daytime we cook what he has collected, generally other recipes called “Mariscal” that it is a meal with a little of what has been collected and cooked with Withe Wine, fresh vegetables and potatoes. But back to our recipe, the “Charquicán with cochayuyo” is a delicious if ingredients are fresh, but seaweed need to be dried under the sun for a few days, at least 3-4 days of sun constant to be crunch.  In this conditions, we are ready to cook.

it should be clarified that this recipe is my way of cooking it, it is not exactly the traditional way, but I assure you that it will be delicious.

We start by cutting the seaweed into pieces of about one inch and then cook it for about 5 minutes in boiling water. Then sauté in a pan with olive oil until the seaweed is toasted and add a little soy sauce to enhance its flavor and finally set aside. Now we boil the potatoes and pumpkin in the same proportion and add salt and oil. When they are soft, add carrot chopped in small cubes, corn kernels and peas, cook for 5 more minutes. Remove and drain but keep and set aside some of the broth. Add butter and a little milk and blend everything. If it is too thick, add a little broth until you get a smooth mixture. Separately, sauté onion, bell bell pepper, garlic and ground beef in a pan and add them together with two or three eggs and the seaweed directly to the mixture and integrate everything very well. Finally serve on a plate with a fried egg on top of each portion and add cilantro and pepper to taste. It is a very delicious meal, with many flavors, high in calories and contains many ingredients so the portion should not be very large, but it is very enjoyable. Bon appétit!