Dishes: Ajiaco

Ajiaco, is one of the typical foods of Colombia, specifically in the regions of Cundinamarca and Boyacá. Original is Chibcha Indians of the Andean region. In this area the Aborigines ate porridges of maize and potato seasoned with pepper and guascas, an herb that grew in the wild and gives it its characteristic flavor to these preparations. When the Spanish arrived was added, the chicken, cream and capers, resulting in the Ajiaco Santafereño.

Ajiaco name was placed by the Spanish who encountered along his travels of conquest many soups or stews that were made with meat and vegetables in each country and were prepared with pepper, a spice native. Without going too far is one of the traditional dishes of the island of Cuba, consists of a thick soup made from meat of different types (beef, pork, chicken) and tubers: potato, cassava, yams, green bananas, pumpkin, corn and of course chili.

Ajiaco is a Colombian potato soup. Although several regions of Colombia have their distinct recipe, the most famous is ajiaco santafereño, named after Santa Fé de Bogotá (the former name of Bogotá) capital of Colombia, where it is a cultural mainstay. It typically contains pieces of chicken, large chunks of corn on the cob, two or three kinds of native potatoes (tiny papas criollas that fall apart and thicken the soup, and give the soup its characteristic dark yellow color; the waxy sabanera and/or the soft pastusa), and guasca (Galinsoga parviflora), a weedy, aromatic herb common in all America that lends the dish part of its distinctive flavour.