…en Perú - Travel Culture History News

Rachel Gamarra explains how Peru’s abundance of fresh, unprocessed, nourishing, tasty and cheap food can help keep you slim, and tells of her first experience in a Peruvian supermarket and how it compares to one in her home country, the super-sized United States.

The United States takes the cake on being the most obese society in the globe, but what is the secret to Americans slimming down abroad?

FRESH VARIETY
I once went into a Metro supermarket with my Kodak and recorded a few short clips to show to the folks back home. The produce manager wasn’t too thrilled with me recording in the store, but I explained to him that we didn’t have this much variety back in the States and that an American has to see it to believe it.

My very own eyes popped out of their sockets and my jaw dropped the first time I visited a Peruvian supermarket, I couldn’t believe the number, colors and variety of starches, grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits, dairies, etc. that were in a commercial store. I saw foods I had never witnessed or tasted before in my life!

The produce section in Metro alone makes any American supermarket’s produce department look minuscule in size and variety.

While produce and meats are often fresh in commercial supermarkets in Peru, you can still find fresher ingredients by visiting any of the numerous municipal or district markets that dot the country.

With the Christmas holiday just weeks away markets will soon be filled with crates and truck beds loaded with Turkeys, YES - LIVE TURKEYS! Choose the bird you want to roast and they’ll slaughter it right in front of your eyes at the market - forget preservatives, genetically altered slaughter house poultry and a “Lord only knows how long it’s been sitting on the shelf” worries. You can check the quality and health of your food for yourself in the Peruvian markets.

If Poultry, Pork or Beef aren’t on the day’s menu for you, then you can hop on down to the Fish Markets of the Costa Verde.

Read the rest and see the videos here »

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I’ve been spending a lot of time in central Lima recently, so naturally I have been using a significant amount of that time to eat. After serious study, I have come to the conclusion that the best place to eat in central Lima is… drum roll… El Fayke Piurano.

Outside El Fayke Piurano

Just half a block along Jirón Huancavelica, turning off to the left from Jirón de la Union if walking towards the Plaza de Armas, El Fayke Piurano serves up some of the best seafood in Lima.

It doesn’t look much from the outside and it doesn’t appear all that different from the thousands of cheapish restaurants that line the beautiful but noisy old colonial streets of central Lima. Although, it’s true, you’ll eat amazing food in any of these places, El Fayke is something special.

The decoration is nothing special… this is a simple place for ordinary local people. While you’ll be wise to avoid seafood, particularly uncooked or room temperature fish in the more run down parts of town, El Fayke is pleasantly clean.

Inside El Fayke Piurano

The menu is long, and you can’t go wrong with your choice. From a ceviche de cojinova to a arroz con mariscos, the servings are just as huge as the list of dishes to try. Service is fast, and the staff attentive. Most importantly, the prices are fair - any good meal over 25 soles per person in Peru is probably paying too much. In El Fayke, you’ll leave food on your plate and often pay far less than that.

Grumo from Brooklyn posts on TripAdvisor:

Two different sources said that Fayke is the place to have ceviche in the central part of Lima. When first we heard about it from a tourist office, we became cynical about a such a straight-forward this-is-the-place-to-go referral. We walked into a fine hotel and asked where the desk person recommended and we again heard Fayke. So we figured that we should give it a try.

Fayke is not huge. When you first see it it does not seem to be a special place recommended by others. You can get a good ceviche for 18s and up. First of all the portions are big. Not that that is a reason to go to a restaurant, but neither of us could finish our plate.

I had a mixed ceviche for 20s that also was fun just to look at. There was a good variety of fish and seafood, including what I think was a crayfish to literally top it off. The dish was nicely set off with a chunk of beautifully orange sweet potato. There were two types of beans. I hate to admit how excited I was thinking I was having lima beans in Lima!

Tamalito Verde con su salsa criolla

Well done tourist office! Lima is one of the world’s gastronomic hotspots and tourists should be encouraged to explore it’s out of the way high-quality traditional restaurants. Peru has the largest variety of dishes in the world, 468 according to the Guinness Book of Records, and most of them can be tried in Lima. If there is one thing tourists should do while in Lima it is eat.

Kirk knew this.

A few months back, the Missus and I decided on a trip to Peru. It was the perfect country for us…..a great combination of food, history, culture, and more food!

After checking in at our hotel, totally famished, we headed off for our first meal in Peru. I had intentionally made reservations at a hotel close to a restaurant I wanted to try….. yes, I know, a bit backwards……but since this was just a place to crash for evening….. Right around the block was El Fayke Piurano. Read the review »

Arroz con Mariscos

I’m looking for another excuse to be in central Lima around lunch time.

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Lima’s top chefs unite through the Peruvian Society of Gastronomy and Peru’s tourism and exports promotions agency PromPeru to bring the world the First International Fair of Lima, a gastronomic fair of epic proportions.

Peruvian food was all but unknown to the world a decade ago, but this has begun to change in recent years. In 2004 an article appeared in The Economist. “Peru can lay claim to one of the world’s dozen or so great cuisines”. Peruvians, apparently oblivious until now that they were regularly eating one of these great cuisines began to realise that they had yet another world wonder to market. Later, in 2006 at the Madrid Fusion Fourth International Summit of Gastronomy, widely regarded as the most important such meeting of industry experts in the world, PromPerú – the Government funded tourism and exportation promoter – turned up to show off Peruvian cuisine. It took top chefs’, gastronomy critics’ and journalists’ breath away, and Lima in particular was declared the “Gastronomic Capital of the Americas”.

Held in the Cuartel San Martín in Lima’s Miraflores district, the event began yesterday with the inauguration by President Alan Garcia and the tourism and trade minister Mercedes Araoz, accompanied by chef Gastón Acurio and others from Lima’s community of chefs.

All the greats were here, from the talented chefs of Lima’s more fancy restaurants such as James Berckemeyer, Pedro Miguel Schiaffino and Adolfo Perret, to local restaurateurs of exceptional ability like Sonia Bahamonde and husband Fredy Guardia who are owners of the Sonia cevichería, and loveable Teresa Izquierdo, an expert in all that is comida criolla and queen of her restaurant El Rincón Que No Conoces. Also attending is everyone’s favourite sushi master Toshiro Kinishi,

Fredy Guardia squeezing lemons

dessert-making Sandra Plevisani, ceviche scientist Javier Wong, Blanca Chávez of Arequipan restaurant El Rocoto and countless others I haven’t yet been blessed with the knowledge of.

Best of all, Lima’s best restaurants, including many of those owned by the celebrities listed above, turned up with stands where their delicious delicacies are served at or below cost. Each dish, whether it be some amazonian juane or cecina con tacacho from El Aguajal, some rocoto relleno from El Rocoto, some noodles from Chifa Wa Lok, some seco del chavelo or ceviche de concha negras from Piuran restaurant La Paisana, choritos or ceviche from the back of Fredy’s famous boat or from Javier Wong’s talented hands - nothing I ordered cost more than 10 soles.

Gastón Acurio enjoys a Pisco Sour

Santiago Quierolo offered turkey sandwiches and pisco sours while nearby El Chinito sold his famous chicharrón. La Gran Fruta, Lima’s fruit juice sensation was also there - as was the Tia Grima, a Miraflores street vender who sells what might be the best anticuchos in Lima, just maybe beating Tio Mario and El Bolivariano, though when everything tastes so good it’s hard to tell.

In a huge tented area, producers from across the country had stands set up. Fresh vegetables from Pachacamac, and different potatoes from Pasco, Huánuco, Apurímac, Cajamarca where brought down from the Andes by the growers. Also present were the Aymara chuño-makers.

The event finishes on Sunday 28th of September. It seems to have been such as huge success - and attended by internationals chefs such as Albert Adrià of Spain’s El Bulli, Sumito Estévez of gourmet.com, and Xabi Gutiérrez of the Arzak restaurant - that it’s sure to be a popular annual event.

Photos - Read the rest of this entry »

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The Chuño (or tunta) has fed families in Peru’s altiplano for more than seven thousand years. Today, with the growth in popularity of Novoandina food, the humble chuño has been thrust to the forefront of Peru’s gastronomic scene.

3,800 metres above sea level, the locals of the district of Ilave, in the province of Collao in Puno, produce a dried potato they call the tunta. Details of its preparation have been passed down from generation to generation, feeding the population of Peru’s high altiplano for thousands of years.

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Process

It takes about 50 days to make good quality Chuño, the process goes something like this…

Gather the potatoes to be worked with. Tonnes of Locka, Sani Imilla, Chaska and Occocuri potatoes are brought from growing regions like Andahuaylas and Arequipa where there is a more stable climate.

Sort the potatoes, divide them by their varieties and weight, removing those that have gone bad.

Those potatoes that have passed the selection are left overnight, for three or four nights, in the open fields of the altiplano, where during the winter the temperature drops far below zero and they are frozen. In the mornings they are collected and protected from the warm sun.

“If the strong rays of the sun fall on the potatoes they go purple of black, from these you can only make Black Chuño, not the White Chuño or tunta“, explains Andrés Muñeico, a tunta producer from the rural Chijichaya community.

If the potatoes sound like rocks when hit together, it is time for the next phase. They are submerged in a river in mesh cages for up to thirty days where they are slowly cleaned.

When removed from the river, they are placed for one final night in the open to be frozen again.

The next day they are pealed and washed once more. To do this, the potatoes are placed in a net at the shores of a river. In rubber boots, the townspeople stomp on the rock hard potatoes which, pushed together inside the net, rub against each other and peal themselves.

Left to dry for another week among the Andean grass called ichu, they end up an intense brilliant white colour.

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The number of dishes you can make using tunta is surprising - Andean mothers demonstrate a lot of culinary creativity when feeding their families, as shown at the “First Gastronomic Competition with a Tunta Base”, organised by the Ministry of Agriculture. Cooks from twelve community restaurants, known as comedores populares, fought to win the top prize and entered a variety of dishes including Escabeche de Tunta, Ocopa de Tunta, Tunta Rellena (Stuffed Tunta) with Charqui (beef jerky) and cheese, and a tunta stew.

Rodolfo Tafur, a scholar of Andean gastronomy, is convinced that the tunta can help push the cuisine of the altiplano to national and international success. “Aymara cuisine is a movement that is ever more fashionable, there is a big market for the people of Puno to satisfy”, says Tafur. He goes on to explain that the chuño or tunta could even improve establish dishes from Lima - a city declared the gastronomic capital of the Americas.

Jorge Clave, the director of Puno’s first school of gastronomy called Egatur agrees. “We are making our students work with ingredients from the region, taking advantage of what we have on hand, which as we’ll show, are really very good”.

The Tunta Sour, a variation of Peru’s famous national drink, was one of the many menu items created by Clave’s students, and is a drink with which everyone who is working hard on promoting the tunta can toast with pride.

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One city in which Peruvian cuisine has had a bit of difficulty in gaining a culinary foothold is Buenos Aires. Seen for years as cheap, as geared more towards the city’s thousands of Peruvian immigrants, Peruvian cuisine had to transform itself to become the gourmet option it deserves to be.

As Peru Food explains, it appears that in the past couple of years, this transformation has taken place - the Peruvian food boom has finally reached the Argentine capital, and there are now various high-end dining options. Read on »

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Declared the International Year of the Potato by the United Nations to highlight its importance in reducing world poverty and hunger, particularly in this time of high food prices but static potato prices, this gift to the world from Peru is now a staple food for billions of people.

First cultivated in the altiplano around Lake Titicaca, before spreading around the world, Peru is very proud that its national staple is also the national staple of many dozens of other countries.

Maybe Quinoa will be next?

To see the Potato in use around the world, click here.

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Quinoa, the grain of the Incas, has been cultivated in the Andean highlands of South America for over 7000 years, yet it is a relative newcomer on the international market. Pronounced “keen-wa”, quinoa comes from the Quechua language spoken by many indigenous people in South America.

It was one of the most sacred foods of the ancient Incas, a plant so nourishing, delicious and vital, they called it chesiya mama; the ‘mother grain’. Each year the Incan emperor so it is said would, using a golden spade plant the first quinoa seeds of the season. At the solstice, priests bearing golden vessels filled with quinoa made offerings to Inti; the sun.

With the European conquest, the cultivation of quinoa was suppressed possibly because it had a religious significance for the Incas, however, the Andean people continued to grow it in small amounts. In the late 1900’s interest in quinoa began in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile. That interest has now spread to North America, Europe, and Asia. There is some quinoa being cultivated in Colorado and Canada; but only a few varieties will grow and the climatic conditions are not advantageous.

A gluten-free product, it is suitable for anyone afflicted by wheat allergies, easily digestible, and a perfect base for vegetarian dishes. Quick cooking, it holds well, and blends nicely with a wide variety of ingredients. Because of its high nutritional profile quinoa is sold in health food stores; but gourmets are now recognizing it for its pleasing flavor and crunchy texture.

The plant is a broad-leafed, annual herb that grows wild. When mature, this tall plant is topped off with large plume-like seed heads that range in colour from vivid red, orange or yellow to black or white. Before being eaten, quinoa seeds must be processed to remove their bitter coating of saponin. After washing or dry polishing, the ready-to-cook seeds are white or beige in colour.

Quinoa whole grain Quinoa is not a true cereal grain, but rather the botanical fruit of an herbal plant. It is however treated as a grain in cooking. The grains are small yellow flattened spheres, approximately 1.5 to 2 mm in diameter. When cooked, the germ coils into a small “tail” that lends a pleasant crunch. The leaves of the plant can also be eaten raw in salads or cooked like spinach and Quinoa flour lends a delicate nutty flavor to quick breads.

Quinoa can be eaten as hot breakfast cereal; an infant cereal; a rice replacement; a nutritional thickener for soups, chilli and stew; in salads, casseroles and desserts; and more.

Quinoa’s spinach-like leaves and its seeds are highly nutritious. The leaves, which unfortunately seldom reach the ‘modern’ consumer, may be eaten raw in salads or cooked like spinach. They are high in Vitamin A. The seeds that are now readily available are rich in protein, high in fibre, and particularly rich in the amino acid Lysine.

The ‘seeds’ are also good sources of calcium, phosphorus and vitamins B and E. There are several varieties of quinoa available in shops, which range in colour from dark brown to near white. The latter varieties are most common and are considered superior. If storage beyond 3-4 weeks is required it should be stored in the refrigerator or even the freezer.

Once cooked, quinoa is delicious and extremely versatile; it may be used in the place of almost any other grain, including rice, to make everything from appetizers to desserts to pasta. You can even substitute it in your favourite recipe for rice pudding!

Quinoa salad How come it is only just becoming popular now? Why then, unlike the other Inca “wonder foods” maize and potatoes, is it so little known outside of South America? This question has never really been answered, but one theory is that the Spaniards who carried maize and potatoes back to Europe in the sixteenth century may have tasted quinoa that had not been properly processed and would have been bitter to the palate and therefore failed to realise its potential.

Fortunately though, the skilful farmers of the Andes continued to cultivate it and, thus, presented this ancient “supergrain” for the modern world.

Some Quinoa recipes:

- Quinoa Salad
- Quinoa, Cashew and Grape Salad
- Quinoa with mushrooms
- Quinoa-Stuffed Peppers
- Quinoa Chard Pilaf
- Quinoa Squash Pilaf
- Quinoa Vegetable Soup
- Mediterranean Quinoa
- Shrimp and Quinoa
- Quinoa Pudding

Original Article by Living in Peru.

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Perhaps Arequipa’s signature entrée is the Rocoto Relleno. The rocoto is a chilli of Andean origin used for over 5000 years - one of the first to be domesticated. It looks very similar to a bell pepper but as one of the world’s spicier chillis, you can bet it doesn’t taste like one. In fact is is about 50 times spicier than a jalapeño.

Rocoto Relleno is essentially rocoto stuffed with minced meat.

The top of the rocoto is carefully cut off and the seeds and insides removed.
You must then place the bottoms and tops in water with sugar and vinegar to be boiled - boil the chillis 2 or 3 times with fresh water to lower the level of spiciness.

Ground beef and pork, both fried beforehand, are mixed with chopped onions and sliced hard-boiled eggs, seasoned with ají panca chilli paste, cumin, salt and pepper.

The rocotos are filled with the mixture, a slice of mozzarella cheese is placed on top, the the tops of the chilli are place decoratively on top of the cheese and all is then baked for 15 to 20 minutes and served immediately.

More on rocotos and a recipe can be found on Canela & Comino.

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Peruvians in the United States are pleased as fellow Peruvian Amparo Alam won a cook-off competition on the show Ultimate Recipe Showdown on The Food Network. In the Chicken category, the 51 year old mother, originally from Lima now living in Utah, entered her dish as “Peruvian Herb-Roasted Chicken”. Citing it as her mothers recipe, something she enjoyed as a birthday treat as a child, the chicken is roasted after being marinated with fresh Peruvian lemons, cumin, basil, garlic and the magical Peruvian chilli, huacatay. Accompanied by fried sweet potatoes, her dish soundly defeated the other eight competitors entries, winning 99 of the possible 100 points available.

The crisp spicy chicken won her $25,000 and her recipe is now on the menus of T.G.I Fridays restaurants across the United States.

“What’s great about this dish is that it just screams ‘Friday’s’,” said Scott Randolph, of T.G.I. Fridays R&D.

“We are very excited to bring America’s greatest recipes to our guests,” said Mike Archer, president of T.G.I. Friday’s USA. “These are real recipes from real people and their creations have inspired menu items that are only available at Friday’s.”

T.G.I. Friday’s have every reason to be ecstatic. Peruvian food makes waves wherever it is introduced.

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Trucha, or trout in English, are found throughout the waters of Andean Peru but are not a native species. They were introduced from Canada to supplement the food supply and provide poor Andean communities with a much needed boost of protein in their diets.
Despite not being native, trout have not only survived, but thrived in many places across the country. It seems there’s not an Andean lake or river in which they were introduced where the trout aren’t doing well.

I haven’t visited Canada or tasted fresh Canadian trout, but the soft pink meat of a freshly fried Peruvian trucha is delicious. If you can eat one just seconds after being plucked from the water, all the better, as I found out in the Chillon valley.

Fish farms exist along the banks of many Andean rivers and lakes, mass breeding yet more of this tasty fish species. This one (see photo) in the Chillon valley is typical of those found on rivers. Using the river water itself to fill and filter various tanks for fish of various stages of development, costs are low and fish yield is high.

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