Anticucho Heart Skewers

Anticuchos de corazón are the great street food of Lima — carts on the corner after dark, a woman working a long charcoal brazier with a paper fan, skewers coming off two at a time with a boiled potato and a piece of choclo. The dish carries Afro-Peruvian history: enslaved Africans in colonial Peru were given the parts the household didn't want, and turned beef heart with ají panca and vinegar into something people now line up for. Skewered meat over coals goes back further than that on the Andean coast, but the marinade is the Afro-Peruvian contribution and it's the reason the dish is famous.

Beef heart is lean, dense, and mineral — closer to a very good sirloin than to any organ meat you're bracing for. Two things decide whether it's great or awful. First, the trim: every bit of hard fat, silverskin, and valve tissue has to come off, no exceptions. Second, the fire: hot and fast, two minutes a side, nothing more. Kiawe coals run hot and clean, which is exactly what a two-minute cook needs — you want char, not a long smoke bath.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs beef heart, trimmed clean and cut into 1 1/4-inch cubes
• 1/4 cup ají panca paste (ají mirasol if you want more heat)
• 6 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp ground cumin
• 1 Tbsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp kosher salt, 1 tsp coarse black pepper
• 3 Tbsp neutral oil, plus more for the baste
• Bamboo or metal skewers — soak bamboo 30 min
• Boiled potatoes and corn on the cob, to serve
• Lime wedges

Cook Sequence

1. Trim first and trim hard. Split the heart open, cut away the valves, the pale silverskin, and all the firm exterior fat. You should be left with clean dark red muscle and nothing else. Cube it at 1 1/4 inches.
2. Whisk the ají panca, garlic, vinegar, cumin, oregano, salt, pepper, and oil. Toss the cubes through it, cover, refrigerate 8-24 hrs. Reserve a half cup of the marinade separately for basting.
3. Build a hot direct fire — kiawe lump or chunks burned down to glowing coals, grate 3 inches above. Throw a handful of kiawe chips on right before the meat.
4. Thread 4 to 5 cubes per skewer, snug but not crushed together, and let them come off the fridge chill for 20 minutes first.
5. Skewers straight over the coals. 2 minutes, brush with the reserved marinade thinned with oil, flip, 2 more minutes. Heavy char on the edges, no grey band underneath.
6. Pull at 130-135F. Past 140 the heart tightens and goes livery — that's where the bad reputation comes from, and it's entirely avoidable.
7. Rest 3 minutes only. Serve with a boiled potato and a piece of corn on the skewer end, lime alongside.

Round Out the Plate

• Grilled Corn on the Cob — stand-in for Peruvian choclo, same job
• Pickled Red Onions — close to salsa criolla, the classic partner