An attempt at Lomo Saltado

One of the things we have been missing since we left Peru is Lomo Saltado, a dish of deliciousness we would have never guessed possible since it combines food we would have never thought to combine and even a few we didn't even like before our excursion into this exotic culinary wonderland. Lomo Saltado is a derivation of Chinese stir-fry which the creative Peruvians got a hold of and tweaked to their liking, primarily by adding two of the favorite Peruvian staples, rice and potatoes. So take some beef cut into strips, marinate it for three hours in a fabulous mix of various native peppers, liquefied and spiced up, toss it into and pan with strips of red and green peppers, tomatoes and onions and cook it up. While the meat was marinading, this would have been a good time to peel the potatoes and slice them up french-fry style and get them going, since it will take a bit of time to fry them all up. As the meat and potatoes were finishing up, throw in the rice to cook with some garlic and toss in a few peas for color. When all is complete, throw the french fries in a big pot with the meat and shake the pot to toss it all together and get the fries completely coated in the yummy beef juices. Then, serve it over the rice.

A full-square meal. And soooo yummy.

So that was the Peruvian way to do it - the right way, I must say, but those of us this side of the Equator will come up short in the ingredients department, not to mention time willing to stand over a hot stove, so for our attempt, we improvised.
I bought beef fajita meat in the marinade and a bag of frozen french fries. The rest of the prep was the same, as far as the cooking goes. We all agreed that it wasn't the same as Noemi's, or Maria's, or even Resaurante Chelsea's, but it was a pretty good "as good as it's going to get with what we got".