Food

My diet is a high-quality complex carbohydrate diet. Every meal includes potatoes, and/or rice, and/or pasta. I eat Alpaca meat every day. Alpaca meat has the same texture and taste as a pork chop but is leaner. One of my favorite plates is chicharron de alpaca, which is fried alpaca chunks served with potatoes and chuño. Chuño is potato that is frozen in its young growth state, and thus is stunted into being smaller and has a darker color. I am told it is more nutritious than a normal potato. The new volunteers in the valley say it’s like eating Styrofoam. Needless to say they don’t like it, but I have grown accustomed to having it in my soup and it tastes fine to me. Maybe it doesn’t bother me because I know it is higher in nutritional value.
Chicken is more expensive than alpaca because the majority of the people in the mountains have alpaca. In my town there are roughly 1,000 people, and about 12,000 alpacas in the farms and ranches surrounding Tuti. In almost every big town, and city in Peru there are Pollo a la Brasa restaurants, which serve roasted chicken. The soft meat of chicken is always a treat from the tougher texture of alpaca. When I tell people outside of the Colca Valley that I eat Alpaca everyday they seem very surprised. Since alpaca is rare outside of the mountains, it is considered a delicacy and is expensive especially in cities like Lima.
The delicacy in the mountains is cuye (guinea pig). People barbeque cuye, and use different types of sauces depending on their preference. If people like you, they will invite you over to their house to have cuye, which is a big gesture since cuye is expensive in the mountains. Personally I don’t like cuye, I’d rather eat chicken or alpaca. Cuye doesn’t have that much meat, the skin is thick with a few hairs sticking out, there are a lot of bones, and is served with its claws and teeth still connected to the body. When the plate is served to you, you can’t help but feel that the eyeless cuye is staring right at you, mouth gaping, and fingers clenched like it had been burned alive and spent its last breath screaming for mercy. Some of the other volunteers think it tastes great, I wouldn’t argue against the taste, I’m just not too fond of all the work that involves getting to the meat and the presentation of a screaming guinea pig.
Beef is not very common in the mountains. People do raise cows for milk, but I think raising the bulls to sell them to another rancher for mating is more profitable then just selling the meat. Bulls sell for 1,500 dollars on up depending on the size of the bull. There has been a problem with people getting their cows and bulls stolen in the middle of the night. Some ranchers are armed with guns, and/or have dogs for protecting the cows. One rancher had a rottweiler for protection but the thieves killed the dog. Getting your cows stolen is a great loss, and I know of one rancher that had to quit ranching after almost all of her cows were stolen. She had to move to Arequipa City and find a job there.
Rocoto Relleno (stuffed) is one dish traditional to the region of Arequipa. Rocoto is a spicy pepper that they bake filled with vegetables, ground meat, and cheese, and is definitely delicious. Rocoto Relleno is one of the spicier dishes that you can get, the people in Peru are not as accustomed to spicy food as Americans are accustomed to spicy Mexican food. You can get ground chile with your meal at any restaurant, known as ‘aji’. I like to put it in my soup and with my fried potatoes. Peruvians comment on how much aji I use, amazed at how spicy I make my food.
In the mountains we eat soup for lunch and dinner, and have a plate of food served after it. On market days, we also have soup served for breakfast. Although I have eaten hundreds and hundreds of bowls of soup, I have not grown tired of it. The soup always has potatoes or chuño, vegetables, and alpaca meat in it. In the provincial capital Chivay, sometimes the soup is minestrone style with pasta. Either way, the soup is always pleasantly warm for the cold mountains, and is highly nutritious.
One of the positives of living in the mountains and not a big city, is that our breakfasts are always hearty. I am used to having big American breakfasts, and when I lived outside of Lima during training, breakfast consisted of bread, butter, and sometimes olives. When you stay at a hotel in the big cities, like Arequipa City and Lima, the hotels serve breakfasts of bread, butter, jam, and a cup of coffee. I joke with the other volunteers that that cannot be called breakfast. Call it what it is, bread and butter. When I’m in Arequipa City, I normally skip the free hotel “bread and butter”, and go find myself a real plate of food. I guess I’m just another American meat head that has to have meat, and/or eggs for breakfast. When I’m in Chivay I normally go to the same street vendor and buy 3 sandwiches of eggs and cheese (for $1), and then go to the store to buy a liter of orange juice. Oh yes, I finish all of it, and I am plenty ready for lunch 4 hours later.
On the coast a traditional plate is ceviche. Ceviche is raw fish served in a lemon sauce, with onions, sometimes tomatoes, and a slice of sweet potato on the side. The Peace Corps doctors warn us of ceviche since it is a raw meat, but I have eaten it several times and have not had any problems (knock on wood for me). Anytime I go to the coast, I have to eat seafood since I am a seafood lover and the only thing we get close to seafood in the mountains is fried trout. When I went to Piura, which is a coastal region in the north, I encountered a few burger joints. The burgers there were delicious and cheap. One of my favorites was a burger served with guacamole and Doritos chips, a combination that I have never thought of but definitely enjoyed. Burgers were one of the American foods I did not know I would miss, until I started dreaming about hamburgers. I would dream about being at the mall and ordering a couple burgers from a Wendys, or Burger King. Did you know that when you eat in dreams you don’t ever feel full in you dream? Well I didn’t until I started dreaming about eating burgers and woke up in the mountains of Peru, many miles from a burger, and my stomach screaming for a burger. I dream about burgers at least once a month. It’s one of those things you try to block out of your mind, because it is pure torture knowing that there is nothing I can do to satisfy my craving until I am in Arequipa City. That’s why almost every time I am in Arequipa City I go to Burger King at the local mall with my burger buddy Tom, and buy a Whopper, or a Megadoble which consists of two patties, bacon, cheese, tomato, and lettuce (my mouth is watering right now, I feel another burger dream coming on tonight). One of the times I thank globalization.
A general difference between Peruvian and American plates of food, is that Peruvian plates have ‘side meat’. By ‘side meat’ I mean that meat comes with your food, but is smaller than the other food that comes with your meal. In the States, a lot of times the meat is the main dish. Burgers, chicken, ribs, turkey at Thanksgiving (oh yes, I miss Thanksgiving), ham, omelets, chicken fried steak and eggs, shake n’ bake pork chops, t-bone steaks, top sirloin steaks, filet mignon, and salmon filets. Think of a platter of 20 plus spicy hot wings, with 5 teeny-weeny celery sticks in the middle next to a little cup of blue cheese dressing. Now THAT is American. To sum up the American train of thought when it comes to food, I’m reminded of an old commercial funded by the cow ranchers of the America where the slogan was, “Where’s the beef?”
My overall experience of Peruvian food has been good, and I know there are plates that I am going to miss when I return. Some I will probably never have again, like Pancha Mancha. To make Pancha Mancha you dig a gigantic hole in the ground, and cook large rocks for several hours in a fire. You use a red spicy seasoned sauce and marinate chicken. You then wrap the chicken up in leaves with potatoes and corn. You then throw the hot rocks in the hole in the ground, put the wrapped up food on top of it, place more rocks on top, and then cover the whole thing with dirt and let it sit for hours. The result is slowly roasted chicken, potatoes, and corn that are full of flavor since the juices cannot evaporate and escape. This was one of the first traditional plates we were taught about in training.
I’ve learned that I cannot over generalize Peruvian food because each region has its traditional plates, and typical foods. I’ve yet to travel to the jungle, which I hope to do for New Year’s, and when I’m there I’m sure I will experience some new plates. Food is very much a part of Peruvian culture, just like cultures across the world. And the varieties of typical plates found in Peru are a reflection of the diversity of the culture. Some cooking methods it seems you can find anywhere, like barbequing. But I would know I am at a Peruvian barbeque when I see slices of cow heart (anticucho) on the grill. Which I must say is absolutely scrumptious.