Ecuadorian Potato Cakes with Peanut Butter Sauce

Quite a strange flavour combination, I hear you say... and you would be right, but it does taste good!

I came across this recipe for the simple reason that I was googling recipes from countries participating in the World Cup and this was one of the first ones I found for Ecuador. It sounded interesting, so I thought why not..... I wasn't overly impressed by the potato cakes themselves but the flavour combination with the peanut butter was a lot better than I expected.

All quantities are rough as I was making plain mashed potato for my boyfriend at the same time and used half of it for these llapingachos, or Ecuadorian potato cakes. I adapted the recipe a little.


For the potato cakes:
around 3 large or 6 small white potatoes, enough for 2 people, boiled and mashed then allowed to cool
half an onion, diced
1 tbsp oil
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup grated cheese
 1/4 green pepper, diced

For the peanut sauce:
half an onion, thinly sliced
1 cup milk
1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
salt, pepper


Boil the potatoes and then mash. You need them to be cool enough to handle so either make these an hour or so before your meal or mash them the day before.

Start making the peanut butter sauce at the same time as the potato cakes- see below.

Fry the onion and green pepper in the oil then put in a large bowl with the mashed potato. Keep the frying pan on the stove as you will use it in a minute. Add the egg yolk and grated cheese and mix well. Using either a wooden spoon or your hands, take a large spoonful or handful of the mixture and press down into the frying pan. Cook for 5 minutes on both sides until browned.

To make the peanut sauce, place the sliced onion and milk in a small pan. Bring the milk to a simmer and simmer gently for ten minutes to infuse the milk with the onion flavour.

Remove from the heat and strain to remove the onion then stir in the peanut butter. Return to the heat and bring to the boil, stirring, until the mixture thickens, which will only take a couple of minutes.

Spoon the peanut sauce over the potato cakes to serve.

I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World who has an innovative blog challenge based on the World Cup. Ecuador is playing tonight hence the recipe!