Cuisine

Colombian

Ajiaco is a Bogotá pot of chicken, three kinds of potato, corn on the cob and a handful of guasca, an Andean herb that tastes slightly grassy and medicinal if you have never met it. The soup is finished with capers, cream and avocado at the table. Some potatoes dissolve to thicken; others stay in chunks. It is highland cooking: cool climate, chicken, potato biodiversity. Coastal Colombian food — coconut rice, fried fish — is a different pantry. Ajiaco should not be confused with Peruvian ajiaco, which is a chilli-and-potato idea that shares a name and not a method.

Muisca highland agriculture and Spanish chicken produced a soup that Bogotá made civic. Guasca is the ingredient that travelling recipes skip, then wonder why the pot tastes like chicken and potato only. Three potato varieties are traditional in the highlands; overseas cooks approximate with floury and waxy types. Colombia's regional split — Andes, Caribbean, Pacific, Amazon, plains — is as wide as Mexico's. This catalog's single soup is the highland plate. It should not stand in for bandeja paisa or coastal sancocho.

Guasca matters; a spinach substitute will not do the same job. Corn on the cob is cut into chunks and boiled in the soup. Capers and cream are table finishes, not an afterthought swirl for photographs. Avocado goes in the bowl. Colombian cooking shares maize, potato and chicken with other Andean kitchens. Ajiaco is specifically Bogotá: shredded chicken, dissolving potato, guasca. If you thicken with flour and skip the herb, you have made a generic chicken soup.