Anticuchos de Corazón (Charcoal-Grilled Beef Heart Skewers)

// SUPPLY LIST

// OPERATIONS

1. 1 Rinse the heart and pat it bone dry. With a thin flexible boning knife, cut away the fat cap, the pale rubbery valves and any tubes at the top, then slide the blade under every trace of the white silverskin and the hard sinew running through the muscle: you will discard 350-450 g and be left with about 1 kg of clean, uniformly dark red meat. Find the direction of the muscle fibres, then cut across them, never along them: halve the heart crosswise, cut each half into slabs 2 cm thick against the grain, and cut those into pieces roughly 4 x 3 cm, 25-30 g each, which should give you about 36. Cut with the grain and every piece has full-length fibres running end to end and will chew like elastic no matter how long it marinates. Leaving silverskin on is the other classic ruin of this dish; it will not render on a fast grill and turns every piece it touches rubbery.
2. 2 Toast the seeded ají panca in a dry heavy frying pan (24 cm, cast iron or steel) over medium heat, pressing them flat, 30-45 seconds a side, until they smell of raisins and woodsmoke and go slightly leathery, but stop before any darkening or bitter smell: a scorched chilli is unrecoverable and will make the entire marinade acrid. Cover with boiling water, hold them under with a saucer, and soak 25 minutes until completely soft and floppy. Drain, reserving the liquid, and blend with 6 garlic cloves and 80 ml of the soaking water for 2-3 minutes to a glossy brick-red paste that falls from the spoon in a thick ribbon, then push it through a fine sieve if flecks of skin remain. Jarred ají panca paste (150 g) is what most Lima home kitchens actually use and is an entirely legitimate swap; smoked paprika or guajillo is not, as neither carries the sweet-sour raisin depth the dish is built on.
3. 3 In a large non-reactive bowl (glass or stainless steel, never aluminium, which reacts with the vinegar and leaves a metallic edge on the meat), whisk the ají panca paste with 4 garlic cloves crushed to a paste, the cumin, the oregano, the vinegar, the dark beer, 1 tbsp of the ají amarillo paste, the 15 g salt, the pepper and 4 tbsp of the oil until it is a loose, pourable, deep russet marinade. Before any raw meat goes near it, decant 150 ml into a clean jar and refrigerate it: that is your basting sauce, and reserving it now is what lets you baste freely at the grill without painting raw-meat marinade onto meat that is nearly done. The remaining marinade should taste aggressively salty, sour and cumin-forward on the tip of a spoon, because it has a kilo of dense muscle to season.
4. 4 Add the heart to the bowl and turn and massage it for a full 2 minutes until every piece is slicked dark red to the corners, press cling film directly onto the surface, and refrigerate 12-24 hours, turning the pieces once halfway. Do not shorten this: under 12 hours the marinade seasons only the surface and the centre of each piece stays flat and bland, which is exactly what bad anticuchos taste like. Do not exceed 24 hours either, as the vinegar cures the outer few millimetres chalky and mealy. Lift the meat out of the fridge 40 minutes before grilling so it comes up to about 18°C/64°F and no longer feels cold on the back of your hand, or the outside will burn before the middle is warm.
5. 5 Boil the potatoes in their skins in well-salted water (10 g salt per litre) for 20-25 minutes, until a skewer slides to the centre with no resistance at all and the skins have just begun to crack. Drain, peel while just cool enough to handle, and halve lengthways. Boil the choclo rounds in lightly salted water for 15-20 minutes (ordinary sweetcorn needs only 6-8 minutes) until the kernels are plump and tender but still have some bite; pushed further, choclo goes starchy and pasty.
6. 6 Make the ají de anticuchero: blend the 6 remaining tbsp of ají amarillo paste, the last 2 garlic cloves, the crushed saltines, the evaporated milk, the juice of 1 lime, 3 tbsp of the oil and a good pinch of salt for 1 minute until smooth and about the consistency of pouring cream, loosening with a spoonful of water if it stiffens. You want roughly 300 ml, enough for a proper spoonful each rather than a smear. Chill until serving. The crackers are not a bodge, they are the standard Peruvian thickener and give the sauce the clinging body that lets it sit on the meat instead of running off; add water too freely and you lose exactly that.
7. 7 Lift the meat out of the marinade a piece at a time and let it drip for a few seconds so it is coated but not dripping wet, then discard the used marinade, which has held raw meat and is not safe to baste with. Thread 3 pieces onto each soaked skewer (4 if your pieces ran small), pushed snug against one another but not squeezed tight, keeping pieces of similar thickness together on the same skewer so they finish at the same moment, and leaving 5 cm bare at the blunt end as a handle. Wrap the exposed wooden tips in a twist of foil so they do not burn through over the coals. Skewers loaded sopping wet will steam and flare instead of searing.
8. 8 Light a full chimney of lump charcoal and tip it out when the coals are covered in grey ash, banking them into one even, hot layer with the grate about 10 cm above them. Scrape the grate clean and wipe it with a cloth dipped in about 1 tbsp of the oil. You want 250-280°C (480-535°F) at grate level, which is a fire you can hold your hand over for only about 2 seconds. Do not compromise on this heat: anticuchos cooked over a moderate fire steam rather than sear, and heart that has been steamed goes grey, livery and rubbery. A gas grill on maximum works but gives up the smoke, and indoors a cast-iron griddle preheated 8 minutes over the highest heat with the extractor running is the honest fallback.
9. 9 Lay the skewers over the hottest part of the fire and leave them completely alone for 2-3 minutes, until a dark crust with black-edged spots has formed and the pieces release from the bars without tearing; turn, baste generously with the reserved marinade using a corn-husk brush, a bunch of spring onion tops tied to a wooden spoon, or a silicone brush, and grill 2 minutes more. Give them two further turns of 30-45 seconds a side, basting at each one to build the lacquer, for 5-7 minutes in total: the centre should read 55-58°C (131-136°F) on an instant-read thermometer and be rosy pink and juicy when you cut one open. Past 65°C (149°F) heart turns grainy and metallic, and it crosses that line in under a minute, so stand over the fire and pull them early rather than late.
10. 10 Brush the potato halves and choclo rounds with what is left of the basting sauce and grill them 3-4 minutes, turning once, until the cut faces of the potatoes are blistered and golden at the edges and the corn has taken a little colour and smells toasted.
11. 11 Rest the skewers on a warm plate for 3 minutes, loosely and uncovered, which is long enough for the juices to settle but short enough that they arrive hot, because anticuchos are food that comes straight off the coals; covered, the crust you just built goes soft. Serve two skewers a head still on the stick, with the grilled potatoes and choclo, the ají de anticuchero spooned alongside, lime wedges, and cold beer or chicha morada.

// CLASSIFICATIONS