Flavour in Peru!

In an attempt to stretch my travel musings, I am going to do some round up style posts on the food and drink in the places Greg and I have visited. Mainly because otherwise all I do in my diary posts is talk about food and drinks!

I loved Cusco, Peru for it’s smorgasboard of variety. Types of potato, corn and quinoa that one would never have thought possible! We never ended up eating guinea pig, but may have inadvertently eaten alpaca. I also missed out on trying seafood ceviche in Lima, which is a shame.Make sure you have at least one Pisco Sour whilst you are there, it is a cocktail containing a liquer known as pisco (made from grapes) which is mixed with ice, lime, eggwhite and bitters. They are yum!

Peruvians eat big portions for both breakfast and lunch. They rarely eat a meal at dinner, maybe a cup of tea and a bread roll at most. In Cusco, anyone dining out in the PM hours are unlikely to be a local.

Breakfast was usually a simple stock standard of a few bread rolls, with butter, orange juice, coffee and some scrambled eggs. The bread was usually pretty flat, but soft and sweet. (No multi-grains in sight!) The orange juice I had in South America was always great! Fresh squeezed, every time! This is what the hostel put on offer, apparently Peruvians also often have soup for breaky.

If I had to take one cooking inspiration away…

In Peru, it’s the quinoa soups (sopa de quinoa). Always good and so many ways to do them! I will show in pictures two varieties I sampled, although I had quite a few more then that. The first is a thicker style soup from the Fallen Angel. It used at least two varieties of quinoa, a red and yellow and had peas, corn and finely diced carrot in it. There was a subtle onion flavour, along with a Parmesan cheesy taste. There was definitely some parsley thrown in as well.

The second soup was more rustic, with one type of quinoa and a variety of vegies thrown in. It was still bloody tasty though, with a good vegie broth. You could eat that any time! I imagine it isn’t too hard to throw together!

Quinoa is so tasty and so good for you. I am still learning how to use it for more then a sub in for couscous. In soup, it is sensational, I imagine you could add more or less to the soups as you wished.

A dish I wish I had had more of....

Lomo Saltodo, which is a popular restaurant offering in Peru. It is strips of streak, sauteed with soy sauce, vinegar, chili, garlic and onions. It is usually over white rice, with fries on the side! Not a healthy dish by any means, but quite tasty!They love double carbs in SA.

Some top eats ….

• Any tour with Peruvian chefs involved is going to feed you insanely well. The Intrepid Machu Pichu trek was filled with a great variety of local fare, in large portions!
• Cheap but good in Cusco: Nuna Raymi, just outside the Plaza de Arms, this upstairs restaurant offers good set menus for even better prices. Stay away from the main square in Cusco for eating and you will generally find this!
• the Fallen Angel (linked above), is good for a bit of fine dining with a artsy twist. Go if only for the sake of claiming you’ve eaten off a bathtub filled with goldfish. The food is good standard and delicious!

Generally, in Peru and South America in general, eat as much as you can! The food is delicious…you may have to take up running marathons as there are a lot of rice and potato dishes involved!