Seco (food)

The seco is a

The place where it was created for the first time is not known exactly. According to culinary researcher Gloria Hinostroza, the origin of this stew lies in the seco tajine, Arab dish made from lamb.^[4][5][6] His brother, the journalist and gourmet Rodolfo Hinostroza, agrees that the origin would be in the tajine Arabic carried by slaves from North Africa who traveled to the Pacific coast of South America during the early years of the Viceroyalty. ^[7]

There are references that indicate that it could be a stew known in Peru and Ecuador as early as the 19th century,^[8] during his visit to Peru, the anthropologist German Ernst Wilhelm Middendorf stated that:

They are called dry dishes in which chicken or kid meat is sautéed in a thin, spicy broth together with yellow potatoes. There are many stews that are prepared in a similar way [...] Some nuns are very expert in their preparation [...] All these stews have to be sautéed or stewed over a high heat over low heat, to be fully penetrated by the spices, which taste much better than they appear [...] Actually, the external appearance is sometimes inapparent, but this is a fault that could be easily corrected, if tried.^[9]

A recipe for seco de cabrito, a typical dish of the gastronomy of the north coast of Peru, already appears in the New Peruvian Cooking Manual of 1926.^[10] In the 1930 book Chronicles of Old Guayaquil, Modesto Chávez Franco reports that the dry chicken was already prepared in Ecuador since the beginning of the 19th century.^[11]

Origin of name

There is no consensus on the origin of the name of this dish. It is popularly thought that when cooking the stew the water must evaporate until it reaches a degree of dryness, hence it must be "seco", although in reality all the variants of "seco" are usually quite juicy, and that the name "seco" is an ironic way of calling a soupy dish.^[12][13]

One of the most widely accepted references is that the name seco comes from the

However, this is a myth, since, according to Modesto Chávez Franco in his Chronicles of Guayaquil, there are records of this dish from 1820, almost a century before the English presence in the Santa Elena Peninsula.[14]

Varieties

The different ways of cooking "seco" depend on the main meat that is added to it.

In Ecuador

In general, the "seco" one in the highlands of Ecuador is accompanied by white rice or rice cooked with

• 
  Chicken stew cooking
• 
  Chivo stew with white rice and plantain
• 
  Guanta stew with red rice, salad and patacones

• Chicken stew: As its name indicates, the main ingredient is
  tamarind^[15] or the kiwi
  .
• Goat stew:^[8][16] It is a dish consumed in the provinces of Loja, Santa Elena and Guayas Province. It is a stew that derives from the northern Peruvian dry kid.^[1] The meat is marinated with chicha de jora, although beer is preferably used to soften the strong flavor of the meat .^[1]
  In some cases, goat meat is replaced by lamb meat, although the dish is still called in the same way.
• yuca.^[18]
• Other stews: Other stews that are usually prepared in Ecuador are duck stew, goat or lamb stew, chicken stew, meat stew, lamb stew and fish stew.[19]^{[20][21][22][23][24]}