Pollo Saltado à la El Pollo Inka

When I retired, I took over most of the cooking. I have always cooked a little here and there, but now I cook almost all of our dinners. Much of it is grilling, so it is more or less mixing together different spices to make rubs or marinades, but I do quite a bit of cooking on the stove and in the oven as well. The recipe I'm going to share today is a new one. It is an attempt to replicate my favorite dish at one of our favorite Los Angeles county restaurants - El Pollo Inka.

El Pollo Inka is a Peruvian restaurant that my wife and I, and our families, frequented for many years. The last few times we've gone home though, and made the pilgrimage to one of the EPI locations, we've been disappointed. The old flavor just isn't there any more.

Well, the other day, I stumbled across an on-line recipe for Lomo Saltado, the beef version of the recipe. I adapted it for chicken and attempted to make Pollo Saltado, #20 on the El Pollo Inka menu. I can't tell you how many times I ate "the #20" with a cold Cusqueña cerveza, toasted cancha (corn nuts), and platanos (fried plantains).

The recipe I used as a jumping off point was posted by Sabrina Snyder but others have posted the same recipe, so I'm not sure who to credit. Well, let's get cooking.

Ingredients:
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs
salt and pepper,for the chicken
3 tbsp vegetable oil (we cook with avacado oil)
1 small, red onion, cut in thick slices
3 plum tomatoes, cut in thick slices
2 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
⅓ cup chicken stock
2 tsp ground cumin
½ cup fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped
2 green onions, sliced tip to tail, minus the root
2 cups french fries, freshly fried

To make the fries, peel a russet potato and cut it into strips. Soak the potato strips in cold water for at least an hour to remove the starch. Then pat them dry and fry them in batches in a few inches of 300 degrees (F) oil for 4 to 5 minutes. They should not look brown. This cooks the inside. Remove the fries with a slotted spatula and drain them on paper towels. Heat the oil to 400 degrees (F) and fry the potatoes in batches again until they are brown and crispy. Remove, drain on paper towels, and season with salt.

Season the chicken with salt and pepper.
Whisk the soy sauce, vinegar, chicken stock and cumin in a bowl together.

This is probably an extra step, but I cooked the whole chicken pieces, salted and peppered, in 3 tblsp of avacado oil (five minutes on one side, then six minutes on the other), then removed them and cut them into bite-sized chunks to finish cooking.

Stir in the onion and cook for about 2 to 3 minutes.

Add the tomatoes and cook for just a minute. The tomatoes should hold their shape.

Stir in soy sauce mixture and add salt and pepper to taste
Turn off the heat, and toss in the french fries, green onions and cilantro.

I served it with plain, white rice, spooning some of the juices over everything. The recipes I noted above have directions for the aji verde hot sauce that is in squirt bottles at all El Pollo Inka tables, but I didn't make it as neither my wife nor I are fans of the sauce.

Overall, we enjoyed the flavor. There was quite a bit of clean-up afterwards, due to all the frying. If I make this again, I would cut the chicken first and maybe marinate it in half of the soy sauce mixture so it picks up more flavor. If you have a recipe for pollo saltado, let me know...