Turkey cazuela with chuchoca squares

Cazuela from Spanish means cooking pot, stewpot. It is a general name given to a South American soup cooked generally with meat and big variety of veggies. Here in Chile the most popular is cazuela with chicken or beef. However, you can also find its varieties such as with turkey or with pork. As a rule of thumb, each cazuela needs to have the following ingredients:

• piece of meat (e.g. chicken leg)
• potatoes which are peeled and cooked whole
• carrot
• piece of pumpkin
• piece of a sweet corn

Apart for above ingredients, to cazuela are also added rice, small noodles, sweet pepper, cabbage, celery or garlic.

Since lately I have been searching more info about chuchoca a chilean cornmeal, I stumbled upon quite many recipes incorporating chuchoca. One of these was turkey casual with chuchoca. In the original recipe, chuchoca was added directly to the broth. Since I am not the gratis fan of this way of thickening soups I have decide to prepare chuchoca on side – as a squares that can by added later on to the cazuela.

So here are the basic ingredientes I used. You can also check original recipe in here. Ingredients:

• 2 legs of turkey
• 4 medium potatoes
• 2-3 carrots chopped
• celery chopped
• 2 sweetcorn on cob
• 2 pieces of squash (pumpkin)
• piece of leek
• bay leaf
• grained pepper
• piece of garlic chopped
• spices to taste (cumin, sal, pepper, sweet pepper)
• coriander

To prepare chuchoca:

• 1 spoons of chuchoca
• 1 cup of water

Preparation:

First, boil turkey legs for about 10 minutes and throw the first dirty water. Next, pour the water to the pot and boil turkey legs again. This time add bay leaf, grained pepper and cook for 20 minutes. In the meantime, peel potatoes, carrots, garlic and chop celery. Carrots and be sliced or chopped in squares. It´s up to you if you prefer bigger o smaller pieces. Add potato, carrot leek, garlic, sweetcorn and celery and cook for the next 15 minutes. When potatoes are beginning to getting softer, incorporate squash. And cook for another 15 minutes. In meantime, when your cazuela is getting rich flavour, add spices. In the end add coriander or if you prefer you can add chopped coriander on the served plate of soup.

In the meantime when soup is cooking prepare chuchoca squares. Boil one cup of water, when starts boiling pour very slowly one cup of chuchoca and stir constantly to achieve smooth structure of porridge. Cook, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes until it gets really thick. Leave it to cool. When cooled, cut chuchoca into pieces and serve with cazuela.

Enjoy!