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!

Nobel Prize in Peru: Mario Vargas-Llosa!

Last week in Stockholm, Sweden the ceremony of the Nobel Prizes took place, and every Peruvian, whether inside Peru, or anywhere in the world was following it because for the first time a Peruvian received a Nobel Prize: The Nobel Prize in Literature.

Mario Vargas Llosa is by far the most successful writer in Peruvian history, but is not the only one that has been praised globally; we have a history of great writers, among them for example Cesar Vallejo, Ricardo Palma and Julio Ramon Ribeyro, just to name a few!!

During the ceremony last week this great writer gave a speech that was so full of emotion and of culture, especially in the part where he talked about his love for Peru, the country where he was born and grew, before traveling the world and finally establishing in Spain with his family. Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, the great city in the mountains in the South of Peru which is home of the great Condor, an amazing animal. When the writer was still a boy his family moved to Piura, in the coast of Peru very near to Ecuador, and when he was a teenager he moved to Lima, the capital of the country, where he first started studying journalism and got his first job at a very popular newspaper.

Because he has lived in many parts of Peru, and loves to travel and visit new places, Peru is very present in almost all his books, for example in “Conversation in the Cathedral”, one of my favorite books, he describes in a particular way the society and the lifestyle in Lima 50 years ago, or in “The time of the Hero” he describes the experience of attending a military high school, from a teenager’s point of view. Definitely, reading Vargas Llosa really makes you learn and get close to Peru, its landscapes, its people and its mix of cultures.

There is a lot to write about this great man that know finally has received the major recognition that a man in his profession desire, the Nobel Price, and every Peruvian in the world is proud of having him as a fellow citizen…….especially for those of us that enjoy every book he has ever written and continues to do so…..I just hope for many more years we can enjoy of this genius and its writing.