peruvian cuisine
A FUSION OF FLAVORS AND HISTORY
We graciously thank Chef Carla Bentin, Astrid y Gaston, for her contribution of these recipes..
Introduction | Professionals Say
Introduction
On more than one occasion a chef, a food journalist, or a travel writer has drawn the Lima-Paris association. Lima and Paris? Hmmm, you think to yourself dubiously. In both, a winter's day is unforgivingly grey? Lima has the Pacific, and Paris, the Seine? If these are the wild conclusions you are drawing, it simply means that on a grey Lima day, you haven't slipped into one of Lima's oceanside restaurants to taste a Peruvian cuisine that is arguably as refined as Parisian.
Peru's rich cuisine is rooted in the variety of its ingredients, its dynamic cultural history, and the exceptional creativity of its modern-day chefs. These three components playing off each other have brought Peruvian cuisine into the world's gastronomic spotlight.
Japanese, Americans, and Germans are all ordering up raw Peruvian ingredients. The islanders want camu camu, a small Amazonian fruit that contains the world's richest natural source of vitamin C; the Americans want Peruvian asparagus - so much so that they eat more of it than Peruvians; and the Germans want figs, because coming from Peru, the sweet fruit is a fraction of the normal European price. This variety of Peruvian ingredients doesn't go unnoticed in the homeland, but it is taken for granted. Peruvians enjoy their buttery yellow potatoes and cold mango popsicles with an ease that suggests they think the rest of the world eats as well as they do.
But Peruvians not only have unique local ingredients to distinguish their cuisine, they also live in a land that has been crisscrossed by a myriad of immigrant groups. First the Spanish crossed the native Peruvian communities. Then came the Africans, then the Chinese and Japanese, and finally the Italians. In their wake, each cultural group left behind a trail of culinary habits. Some preferred salty, others sweet. Some ate meats, others vegetables.
The variety of flavors in Peru's cuisine shaped the palates of the country's young chefs. These chefs, many of whom have trained professionally in one of Lima's twenty-two culinary schools, know the flavors of a dim sum breakfast or of a salty Italian ham. With a precise understanding of flavor and the plethora of Peruvian ingredients, they are creating restaurants that fuse together Peru's products and history to create an entirely new eating experience. As Chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino (Restaurante Malabar) told Somos magazine, today's chefs are creating fusions that have "to have an association between what you mix, because it has to do with your identity, what you ate as a kid, or because they are products that grow in the same soil, or because they are classic combinations like lemon with raw fish."
The breadth of Peruvian cuisine, from product to history to modern creativity, makes it sophisticated. So while it may be arguable just how much Lima reminds you of Paris, it's hard to dispute what Lima's star chef Gaston Acurio told Gourmet Magazine - in the next few years, Lima will be like Paris. People will come here just to eat.