Peruvian food: You HAVE to try "Antichuchos" in Lima!!

The anticuchos are one of the favorite snacks or entree in Peru, specially in Lima where you can find them from street-carts in a Park to the best restaurants in town! The typical Anticuchos are from beef heart but know you can also find Anticuchos made from tenderloin.........what defines the Anticuchos really is the sauce, which gives them all the flavor: the meat is marinated in vinegar and spices such as cumin, aji pepper, and garlic, and then they are put on a stick ready to be cooked in a grill, and while they are cooking some more sauce is also applied with the help of the leaf from corn, if you try the Anticuchos from the street-carts you can watch the whole process and just delight with the smell while you are in the line to get your delicious Anticuchos!

One of the reasons why this dish is so popular in the street-carts, besides its flavor is that it is so easy to eat even standing because the small pieces of meat are on the stick and you really don't need silverware!

But I have not tell you the better part yet, Anticuchos are regularly served with white corn or potatoes (wich are also cooked in the grilled), or sometimes with corn AND potatoes, and even from the carts on the street to the best restaurants they have to serve the anticuchos with some aji or chili sauce, which is just delicious and the perfect combination for a great meal!!!

If you go to a restaurant the Anticuchos are typically served as a entree but you can also have it as your main dish, if you have the opportunity to share a barbecue in Peru the anticuhos are regularly one of the first items to be served, along with the "Choripanes" wich are sausages with french bread................or if you are just walking around maybe sightseeing or touring around Lima or other city in Peru you can quench your hunger with a stop by some of the carts you can find in many Parks and go on with your day!!!

The biggest Food Festival in Peru: Mistura! Come and delight yourself!‏

This days in Lima is all about Mistura! You take a bus, go to the movies, at lunch at work, everybody is asking “did you go already?, got some tickets? What day are you planning to go?”, because is the event nobody wants to miss, is the opportunity to try great dishes from all across Peru, from a great variey of restaurants and street restaurant and at very affordable prices!

The festival started first on 2009 with the Peruvian Association of Gastronomy promoting the idea of reuniting the main players in Peruvian Gastronomy and make a menu of activities that promote not only the Peruvian Gastronomy but the cultural identity of the Peruvians.

The festival also wants to celebrate that in Peru, through the centuries, the food has been associated with festivities and joy, using techniques that had been transmitted from generation to generation. Also, the food has also been very much hand in hand with the music and social fraternization among different kind of peoples………….and this is the spirit that prevails in Mistura.

The festival reunites all the actors in the gastronomic chain in Peru: small farmers, Pisco producers, cookers, chefs, bakers, confectioneries, restaurants, street restaurants, food institutes, food processing companies and more!

In Mistura you can find all kinds of foods, from Ceviche to “Picarones” which are a special Peruvian dessert almost in the form of a donut but with honey all over…..just delicious! You can also find the most exotic juices made with fruits from the highlands and fruits that are only found in Peru, like the Lucuma.

You can also find some food stands with some Tamales, and “Humitas” which is very much like a tamale but in a sweet flavor, or you can also find the popular “Anticuchos”, which are pieces of meat from the heart of the cow and are cooked on a grill, put together on a stick…………

You can also find Food that is typical from the jungle part of Peru, like “Cecina” wich is a dried meat that is regularly served with “Tacacho”, which is kind of mashed bananas cooked with some salt and species and us just delicious!

The best about the food stands, compared to the restaurants that you can also find at Mistura, is that you can  see the whole preparation of your dish!!!

But it is not all about just eating, you can also go to some of the conferences that are offered by the greatest and most recognized internationally, and they talk about the techniques for the preparation of some dishes, about the different ways a special dish has been reinvented and presented in different restaurants and many more interesting topics!

So if you are planning on Visiting Peru next year around this time, I strongly recommend you to purchase your tickets for Mistura in Advance, the cost is only S/.15 (which is about $6) and inside the festival all the dishes have standardized prices so is the best of Peru’s food at a great price! No better deal!

Food in Peru: Arroz con Pato, the best of the northern cuisine‏!

One of the most distinctive dishes in Peruvian food is from the north coast, the “Arroz con Pato” or, literally translated, “Rice with duck”……………what is special about this dish? Its unique flavor that comes mostly from the species used to cook the rice, but also the way the duck is cook and the accompaniment to the plate, which is most of the times the traditional “salsa criolla” or creole sauce, or sometimes also the “Huancaina sauce”.

The dish is specifically from the Lambayeque region in Peru, where there is one of the most developed and popular cities among the coast: Chiclayo. That is why the dish is also known as “Arroz con pato a la chiclayana” which is just the way to say the dish is made “like in Chiclayo”.

The rice is prepared with butter, salt, garlic, and some pepper, but from where it takes its green color and also its great taste and fragrance is from the coriander, a herb that is very much used in Peruvian cuisine. The duck is also cooked with this mix and it is poured with some beer just to get a bit of its fragrance.

When you come to Peru, and you don’t have the chance to visit the north (which I highly recommend because of its great beaches and culture) you can still try this dish in many restaurants in Lima! One of the best restaurants is the “Fiesta”, which is originally from Chiclayo but you can also find it in Lima.

So….what are you waiting to try this sample of the great Peruvian Cuisine?

The perfect dessert in Lima: Mazamorra Morada

Whether you are just walking around in the streets in Lima doing some tourism or shopping for souvenirs, or if you go to eat some of our delicious typical dishes in one of the many restaurants in town you should not leave Lima without trying a delicious Mazamorra Morada!

So what is this dessert about? The mazamorra morada is made of purple corn mixed with some other fruits like pineapple, this is cooked into a pudding-like texture with potato flour and it is spiced with cinnamon and cloves. Its name could be read as “purple pudding” because in Peru “mazamorra” is a special kind of pudding made of potato flour and can be made of many fruits, but the most popular is the mazamorra morada which is made of the purple corn.

This dessert cand be found in some of the most refined gourmet restaurants in Lima but is also very popular as a “street dessert”, and you can find it for example in carts in the principal squares around town.  Because it is easy to make, the Mazamorra Morada is one of the Peruvian desserts that is typically prepared at home.

Mazamorra morada is also popular in October in Lima because in this month there are celebrations all around town for the “Señor de los Milagros” or “Lord if the Miracles”, these are religious celebrations that include long processions, and the mazamorra is always present in this celebrations.

And if you just loved the Mazamorra and you want to take this delicious dessert to your home country now you can because in all the supermarkets you can find the packets to make at home when you only have to mix it with water and you can have your own Mazamorra Morada anywhere in the world!!

So now you now…..you don’t have any excuse for not trying these great dessert when you come to Peru! Enjoy!

A Delight from mother earth: Pachamanca!

Pachamanca means "food from the earth" or alternatively “pot from earth”, and it is precisely in the earth or in the ground where the food for the Pachamanca is cooked. The cooking is based in hot rocks that are put in a round hole, which form a kind of a big pot underneath the ground. The food is wrapped in banana leaves so that it doesn’t get dirty.

This dish is prepared mainly in the mountains of Peru, but because of its popularity it can also be found in many cities, prepared in different country restaurants. These restaurants normally have a hand-made oven made in the ground, and the first step in the preparation is to heat the rocks with woods. At the same time, while the oven is getting warm, all the meats are macerated with species and wrapped in banana leaves. Also, some potatoes, sweet potatoes and corn are also wrapped to be cooked in the “oven”.

Once all the food is in the oven, it is all covered with more banana leaves to concentrate the heat, and from there, it takes from 50 to 90 minutes before the food is ready to eat! Once the food is ready, there is mostly a small ceremony (based on the tradition from pre-Inca times) where a leader thanks the mother earth for the food…….and after that all the cookers and helpers start to take out the food and unwrap it.

The food is typically served in the table in wooden pots if it is a familiar meal, but if it is in a restaurant, each person is served with one portion of each of the elements of the Pachamanca: chicken, pork, beef, potato, corn, sweet potato, beans, etc!

Also, in the table there is typically some cream chili, as it is a usual in Peru food, for those who wish to eat some of the Pachamanca with it.

So…..if you are coming to Peru, especially to some city in the mountains like Cuzco, Junin, Huaraz or Ancash you have to try the traditional Pachamanca! If that is not the case and you are going to be in a city in the coast, you only have to ask for a country restaurant there it is served so that you don’t miss it!

You can't leave Peru without tasting "Chifa"‏

Chifa is an expression in Chinese which means “eat rice”, and it has been used as the word to describe the mixture of Chinese food in Peru with Peruvian condiments and species. “Chifa” is also the name given to the restaurants of Chinese food in Peru, which are so popular that the only competition they have in number are the restaurants of “Pollo a la brasa”.

You can try Chinese food almost in every large city across the globe, but in Peru the thing is this restaurants don´t prepare “pure” Chinese food, but prepare the dishes with recipes that are now, after so many years, Peruvian, because the base for the dishes are Chinese dishes and techniques, but to get the flavor that almost every Peruvian is used to eat in the Chifas, it has to use Peruvian ingredients and some special Peruvian techniques also. The origin of this fusion between Peruvian and Chinese food come from the XIX century, when the first Chinese immigrants came to Peru and started cooking their own recipes but with the ingredients they could find here in Peru.

The main dish, or at least the most popular and that is regularly combined with other dishes in the Chifa is the “Arroz Chaufa”, which is a rice that is seasoned, among other things with soy sauce, and is fried with some Chinese vegetables, egg, and a specific kind of meat (the most popular ones are chicken, duck and pork).

Another dish that is very popular in Chifa restaurants is the “Tallarin Saltado” which is a very thin spaghetti-like pasta that is also fried in a wok with some vegetables and meat, and is cooked with soy sauce, as most of the dishes in Chifa.

 

Chifa is also very much known for combining sweet and sour ingredients, for example, one of the main sauces that are served in the Chifa in a variety of dishes or just to dip with fried wantan is the tamarind sauce which is made with tomato, sugar and vinegar and is the base for some famous Chifa dishes like the Kam Lu Wantan.

Also very important in the Chifas is that, unlike for example when you go to eat pasta and each person order a dish, in the Chifa is very common to order many dishes and everyone just have a scoop of every one or some of them, because one of the things that are most appreciated when you eat this food is the variety and the mix of flavors, this is why in almost every Chifa, in the menu there are “personal dishes” and “familiar dishes”.

Also, mostly in small Chifas is very common to offer “lunch menus” where you have pre-defined combinations of two or three dishes with some drink, and is very popular among Peruvian working people to eat a “Chiaf menu” in the lunch break from work.

I think there are a lot of Chifa dishes that deserve a whole post just talk about its origin, presentation, and, most important, its great taste, and I promise to do this…..meanwhile I just leave you with more photographs of this delicious food………..enjoy!!

If you come to Lima in summer time: Juice Bars!

Peru is one of the countries around the globe with a great variety of fruits of all kinds and sizes, and is in summer time when some of the richest fruits are “in season” and when you can enjoy them better, such as strawberries, tangerines, guanabanas, watermelon and many more!!

All across Peru there has always been a culture of juices, in almost every household fresh juices are prepared every day, although there is a market for boxed o bottled juices there is a habit in Peru to prepare juices at home, mostly orange, papaya, strawberry or banana juices. Also there is a habit to always have and consume fruits at home, considering that the prices of the fruits is very cheap most of the time, except for most exotic ones as Lucuma,  Chirimoya or Plum. So, inspired in this and also as a way to attract more tourist to the consumption of our fruits in a practical and fun manner, a few years ago some Juice Bars have started to appear specially in the capital of Peru, Lima, and they offer a great variety of juices mixing fruits, and also mixing fruits with cereals and other natural ingredients (honey, milk, yogurt).

The concept is almost the same of an Starbucks coffee shop but instead of ordering coffee prepared in different ways and with different ingredients, you order juices with just one or 5 fruits all mixed if you want!! The price goes from S/.8-13 in Peru Nuevos Soles, which in dollars is between $3-6, and this is for a large cup……you won’t regret to have a taste of this yummy tropical mixes and the best thing of all is that is 100% natural and light!!!  

Gastronomy in Peru: "Lomo Saltado"‏

This dish is one of the main and typical dishes of Peruvian food and it was first created around the XIX century around Lima, the capital of Peru. The dish has strong influences from oriental food, and also from Creole food or “Comida criolla” which is the term used in Peru to reflect the mix of the culture that came from Africa from the slaves that the Spanish brought at that time, and Peruvian natives.

The oriental (specifically Chinese) influence is reflected in the technique of cooking in a frying pan ata high heat, not kwon as “saltear” or leaping. The dish consists of strips of sirloin marinated in vinegar, soy, and other species, which are stir fried with red onions, parsley and tomatoes. This is served with rice and fried potatoes, although initially the potatoes were just boiled, now the dish is mostly accompanied with fried potatoes.

This dish is very common in Peru and almost in every Peruvian house is cooked at least once a week or every two weeks because is easy to make and the ingredients are also very common and accessible in Peruvian food (most of the times a less expensive meat is used, for homemade Lomo Saltado). Also in almost every Peruvian restaurant that exists around the world you can find this dish in the menu, and in contrast with the ceviche that has many varieties, the “Lomo Saltado” is prepared the same every time, the only thing that varies is the seasoning and maybe the presentation (sometimes the meat is placed over the rice and the potatoes so that the soak all the sauce).

In Peru is very common to put a bit of “aji Amarillo” or the Peruvian version of chille in the sauce of the sirloin, so the dish a little spicy (every dish in “Comida Criolla” or creole food has a bit of spice) but regularly the restaurants give you the chilli sauce on the side, specially for tourists that are not used to eat such spicy food so you don’t have to worry about this fact!!