Peruvian Purple Potato Papa a la Huancaína

I spent three months in Peru, one of the world’s most interesting countries. Unlike most tourists, I spent some time up in the north, at a place called Kuelap, a first-century ruined city at the top of a remote hillside. Rumor has it that tall white people inhabited it, possibly vikings. This is way before the Spanish arrived and hundreds of years before the Incas.

This Peruvian dish is from a little-visited inland town, Huancayo, to which you can take a train from Lima. It’s one of