newsletter
july 2007
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Italian Gelato
On a hot summer day, visions of ice cream dance in the head - chocolate-swirled vanilla, strong coffee, or fresh berry cream. The creamy blend of gelato is especially satisfying. Because of Italian immigrants who migrated to Peru in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Lima has a handful of top-notch gelato shops. Chocolate dipped cones can be piled high with coconut and caramel ice creams, but the most interesting flavors to try are those of Peruvian fruits. Quattro D, Lima's most popular gelato shop, serves up slightly sweet chirymoya; D'Laritza, in the Larcomar shopping mall, offers a smooth white chocolate and elderberry ice cream; but the best gelato is the brown-sugar sweet lucuma at Gianfranco. Cone in hand, you can stroll along Lima's oceanfront or wander by the pre-Columbian ruins of Lima's Huaca Pucllana.
A Rose is Rose, but is a Lime a Lime?
Tangy limes, sweet oranges, and tart lemons all have their origin in northern Africa, but the fruits have traveled all over the world, in large part with thanks to the Spanish. With the Moorish invasion of Spain in about 700 A.D., the Spaniards sampled the juicy citric fruits and incorporated them into their regular diet. Then when the Spaniards began to colonize the new world, they carried lemons, limes, and oranges to prevent scurvy. The arrival of the Spanish in Peru, in the fifteen century, introduced the produce to the Americas. But planted in the dry climate of northern Peru, Spanish limes began to take on a new form, they grew small with a brilliant green peel, and their juice was unexpectedly tart. Peruvian limes are a basis of Peruvian cuisine. They are used to cure fish for ceviche, to flavor the pisco sour cocktail, and to season sauces. Try as you might to find a substitute to Peruvian limes, neither Sunkist nor key limes will do. Until more expansive exportation of Peruvian limes begins, the only way to taste the tart juice of a lime grown on the Peruvian coast is to travel to Peru.
Peru or Chile?
The last page of Outside Go's summer 2007 magazine features a frothy Chilean pisco sour and reintroduces the century-old debate is pisco Peruvian or Chilean? A white brandy made from local grapes, pisco is consumed by Peruvians and Chileans as vodka is downed by the Russians and Poles. Outside Go claims that the Pisco sour - a sweet cocktail of limes, pisco, and sugar syrup - was invented by the Brit Elliot Stubb, who lived in Iquique, Peru. After the 1879 War of the Pacific, Iquique fell to Chile, giving that thin country a right to the brandy. Peruvians whole heartedly disagree claiming that Pisco is entirely their own because it was first made in Peru and because the country houses a town named Pisco. Regardless of the heritage rights, Peru and Chile both make a professional pisco. Peruvian pisco tends to be a rounder, smoother brandy, and Chilean pisco has more bite. Both, though, when shaken over ice and mixed with lemon juice make a refreshing pisco sour cocktail.