An Introduction to Peruvian Gastronomy

Until most recently, Peruvian cuisine was hardly noticed abroad. Few outsiders had heard of such dishes as ceviche or carapulca, let alone had tried them. Yet notwithstanding, Peruvian cuisine is one of the World's most varied and delicious. Now, thanks to a vital generation of young chefs and the efforts of people like Tony Custer to make Peruvian cooking well known abroad, many connoisseurs worldwide are beginning to discover it.

The Economist magazine, for example, reported in a January 2004 article that Peru could "lay claim to one of the world's dozen or so great cuisines". Norman Van Aken, one of Florida's most gifted chefs, acknowledged that Peruvian cuisine was possibly the most enticing of those he had studied. And Patrick Martin, academic director of Le Cordon Blue, said that one of the reasons why they had a branch of the school in Lima was the excellent quality of local cuisine.

Two aspects converge to give Peruvian cuisine an uniqueness that few other enjoy. The first one is the country's enormous biodiversity. Peru is home to some 80 types of the world's 104 different biological zones, which assures an amazing assortment of fresh ingredients. Potatoes and hot peppers from the Andes, fish and seafood from the Pacific Ocean, mangoes and limes from the coastal valleys, bananas and manioc from the Amazon jungle: a chef's only problem is abundance of choice.

Second, Peruvian cuisine is the quintessence of cultural fusion. Ever since the first blending between Inca and Spanish traditions, local cooks have been capable of incorporating the flavours and techniques of the many immigrants that disembarked in the country's ports, in particular African, Chinese, and Japanese.

A Brief History of Peruvian Cuisine

Potatoes are probably the main contribution of the Incas to the world. By the early XVI century, when Spaniards arrived, Peruvian natives had already domesticated some 1000 varieties of the tuber. Although potatoes were fundamental to their diet, Inca cuisine also comprised cereals like quinua and corn, meats like alpaca and cuy (a native guinea pig), fruits, and obviously hot peppers -their most significant gift to Peruvian cuisine. Many Inca dishes have make it practically unchanged to the XXI century, and are cooked just like 500 years ago. The best examples are probably carapulca and pachamanca.

During the Spanish Viceroyalty, which spanned over 3 centuries, the Iberian introduced many culinary techniques and ingredients, such as olives, grapes, dairy products, beef, chicken, and rice. Although native and Spanish cultures -and cuisines- were at first unconnected, they began to gradually mix, until they successively fused in Creole culture. New Criollo cuisine took the best of the two worlds to create dishes like ají de gallina or papa a la huancaína, where hot peppers, cheese and milk gently blend in delicious sauces.

Spanish though didn't came alone. They brought with them African slaves, many of whom worked in the cuisines of the noble and the wealthy. Over the years African influence proved essential to Peruvian culture, particularly regarding music and cuisine. Their talent in creating delightful dishes from poor, discarded ingredients has produced two of Peru's best: anticuchos and tacu-tacu.

After independence (1821), a consistent wave of European immigrants arrived in Peru, and their cuisines -in particular French and Italian- provided an additional twist to the culinary melting pot.

However, the real gastronomic revolution arrived from the Far East. First were the Chinese, brought during the mid XIX century as cheap labour, mainly for working in cotton and sugar-cane plantations. Chinese fervently conserved their cultural identity and traditions, and when their contracts expired many moved to Lima, establishing in a zone that was eventually dubbed Chinatown. They opened small eating places that captivated limeños -yet only after the initial distrust was overcome. Chinese, who were mostly from the Canton region, introduced new frying techniques and ingredients like soy or ginger. Peruvian classic lomo saltado is possibly where their influence is most evident.

Paradoxically, when Japanese immigrants began to arrive at the turn of the century -also to work on plantations-, limeños looked down on fish and seafood. Meat, they believed, was more refined. By the 1950s nisei cooks had eradicated this prejudice. Their restaurants served delightful fish and seafood dishes that few could resist. Indeed, it was their subtle culinary touch to recreate ceviche and tiradito as we know them today.