VALLECAUCANA CUISINE: Sancocho & Empanadas.

Guest writer: Lina Martínez

Sometimes food works like an umbilical cord that keeps us tied to our places of origin. This is the case of Linita who has developed an even stronger bond to the cuisine of her country, Colombia since she’s been living with her husband in the US. Se didn’t cook before, and now she wakes up every morning to homemade breakfast arepas, and has started to experiment with other typical dishes, like the ones she shares with us today: sancocho and empanadas. These two traditional foods can be found all over Colombia with different variations, but these recipes are particular to Cali, her hometown. Linita is another of those amazing people I was lucky to become friends with during the pandemic through Instagram. She is a journalist and social communicator by the Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, and she also studied cooking in the Escuela Culinaria Las Margaritas in Guatemala, but mostly worked in advertising before she moved with her husband to the suburbs of Chicago (follow her on Instagram). Linita introduced me to Colombian cuisine and inspired me to make arepas for the first time (you can see the process in this IG story). Till then, I only knew one kind of arepa, but just in her country, there are at over 30 kinds, savory and sweet. Now, she’s making me obsessed with frituras (fried food) and hot soups. Each of these foods shows two different facets of Colombian cuisine: street-food and homemade food. The empanadas recipe is a reconstruction that Linita made by consulting recipes on the internet to reproduce her favorite kind; the sancocho, on the other hand, is a family recipe that was actually shared to us by Gladys, her mother. So, this is not any sancocho, it is the sancocho of the Martínez Family, and both, Linita and Gladys, guided me on the phone (while each multitasking through our daily routines on different cities) along the process. I don’t know if I got it right, but it tasted amazing, and it is definitely one of those dishes that makes you feel hugged.

Other collaborations by Lina Martínez: Buñuelos Colombianos Navideños

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I don’t have “family recipes”. In my country, traditional cooking knowledge is mostly passed on from mother to daughter in an oral manner, same as in other Central and South-American countries. These preparations are likely to be kept as family secrets, so the best way to learn is by making yourself useful in the kitchen and paying attention. I didn’t learn to cook from my mother because she worked out of home and wasn’t much of a cook, but her mother was. My abuela was always in the kitchen or magically orchestrating everything that happened in it from afar, like the grand matriarch she was. Now that I live far from my country I miss the heart-warming smells that emanated from her kitchen and regret not being more attentive.     

Colombia is a country divided into various regions and each has its own typical dishes, but we are generally well-known for eating hot soups, even in warm climates (it doesn’t matter if it’s over 30ºC outside, we eat soup). I was born in Cali, in the Valle del Cauca department, where the star soup is “sancocho”. It is usually served with chicken (but can also be made with beef and/or pork) and various kinds of root vegetables and plantains, which, along with corn, are recurrent ingredients in our cuisine. We also eat fritters of many kinds, the most famous are “empanadas”, which according to the region can have different fillings and are best eaten with a good ají: a fundamental part of an empanada. The empanada “Valluna” or “Vallecaucana” is a simple preparation but full of flavor and expression; it is a food that not only connects us with our ancestors but also to each other, no matter our social or cultural background, we all enjoy street empanadas and have our favorite ones. Almost on every corner of Colombia, you’ll find empanada stalls, even more so that arepas.

To me, the best empanadas in Cali are the ones from El Obelisco; they’re small and crisp and come in different shapes and sizes. To eat empanadas at this popular place, at its main location, you have to look for a table in front of the hotel of the same name, overlooking the Cali River. The place is across the street, so you can see the waiters cross from one side to the other, with trays full of empanadas that you can order by 10ths (they’re small and, believe me, that’s at least what you’ll eat). Empanadas are traditionally swallowed down with a fresh “lulada” or “champús”, a drink made with a fruit called “lulo” or “naranjilla” that you can also find in other countries like Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Panamá.  

I never saw empanadas made at our home, but living out of Colombia and missing them so much, I started to browse recipes on the internet and experimenting, and this is how I came to do them. Sancocho, on the other hand, was not only made by my grandmother, but it was one of the few things my mother actually cooked. The thing about soups in Colombia is that each has an exact point. Most of the ingredients in sancocho are starchy so the key is to know how to balance them. Ajiaco —a typical soup from Bogotá, which is made with three different kinds of potato— for example, has a more dense consistency than sancocho since some of the potatoes it uses are softer than others and will fall apart, while others remain in pieces; so the result has to be kind of creamy but not too much. The only way of getting the right consistency of a Colombian soup is to check as you go. Although there’s usually going to be a discussion around it anyway: if it is too dense or not enough, if it has too much yuca or plantain, or too many potatoes, etcetera.

So, here are the recipes…