Bandeja Paisa (Colombian Mountain Platter)

This week the group had to decide on what food they wanted to cook. One member suggested that as one of our members is Colombian that we should cook something from Columbia.

After going through lots of different recipes everyone agreed that the Bandeja Paisa looked the most interesting and included a good mix of different food to try.

Bandeja Paisa is a platter made up of carne picada(spicy beef), beans, avacado, plaintain, chorizo and rice. Some people put a fried egg with it but the group decided to leave this out.

To make the Carne Picada:

All you need is Minced beef, Diced onion, Jalapeno Chilli peppers (finely chopped), Fresh tomatoes (chopped), Crushed Garlic, Beef Stock and salt and pepper. Put all the ingredients in a pot like we have above and cook until all the beef is cooked through. Then let it simmer.

To make the beans:

For the beans you will need Diced Onion, Chopped Green Peppers, Crushed Garlic, Red Kidney Beans, Oregano, A Teaspoon of Sugar, chicken stock, A splash of Cider Vinegar and a Cup of Water. Put all these ingredients into a pan like the one above and cook down until all the ingredients are soft and the water has gone.

Then cut the Chorizo into thick slices and fry in a pan. The group found that we did not need to add oil to fry the Chorizo as it has fat in it which comes out as oil when you cook it.

With the Avocado just cut them in half, remove the stone and skin and cut the Avocado into slices: 



Preparing the Avocado.

 With the Plantain cut into slices and either fry in some oil or bake until golden brown. We chose to bake our plantain as none of us had ever tried baking it, plus its the healthier option.

We also boiled some plain white rice to have with the dish.

Then put a bit of everything on a plate and there you have Bandeja Paisa!

The group said they really enjoyed all the flavours of this dish. They liked that there were lots of different things to try on one plate.