Valdiviano

History

Valdiviano makes a hearty dish from the plainest larder staples. Charque — sun-dried, salted beef — is roasted, pounded in a mortar, and shredded to a floss, then layered in a dish alternating with chopped onion, sliced bread, and fried potato. Boiling water is poured over the stack and drained off, the whole is dressed with oil and vinegar and seasoned with salt and pepper, and it is finished with halved hard-boiled eggs. The name points to Valdivia in southern Chile, and the dish is a documented Chilean one: a soup of charqui (jerky) and onions. Its usual origin story ties it to the isolated Spanish garrison at Valdivia after the 1598 Disaster of Curalaba, when soldiers resupplied with large amounts of jerky from central Chile, tired of eating it plain, combined it with a few other ingredients into this dish; the forts, one Chilean account records, lacked fresh food and had to get by on charqui and salted meat alone. Charqui is older than that garrison — the word comes from the Quechua ch'arki, 'dried, salted meat,' and dried Andean meat provisioned Inca travellers along the road system long before the Spanish arrived, so the beef is European but the method of keeping it is native to the Andes. In Cocina ecléctica (1890), Juana Manuela Gorriti's compilation of recipes mailed in from across Spanish America, each carrying its own story, this one came from Amelia Lopez de Soruco of Santiago de Chile, who casts it as a restorative eaten at daybreak after a sleepless night — sitting up with a sick person, out hunting, or at a revolutionary meeting — served at the first light of dawn. One thing to flag: where the dish today is generally a soup or caldo, this version is drained rather than served in its broth and then dressed with oil and vinegar, nearer a warm layered assembly than a bowl of soup — a difference the record notes but does not explain.

Ingredients

• Charque (dried salted beef jerky), roasted and pounded
• Onions, chopped
• Bread, sliced
• Fried potatoes (papas fritas)
• Boiling water
• Oil
• Vinegar
• Salt
• Pepper
• Hard-boiled eggs, halved

Instructions

1. Roast and pound the charque, shredding it.
2. Layer it in a dish alternating with chopped onions, sliced bread and fried potatoes.
3. Pour boiling water over, then drain it off.
4. Dress with oil and vinegar, season with salt and pepper.
5. Serve garnished with halved hard-boiled eggs.