Ceviche: Peruvian sushi?

I've never tried sushi so in this post I'm not able to compare it with the most typical Peruvian dish. However, the name sushi always appears when somebody describes you what is ceviche. Few seconds after say this comparation normally you can hear that they are totally different and that the person who speaks doesn't understand how somebody can see something in common between these two dishes. When I heard the word sushi, I immediately thought ceviche had to be awful. I wanted to try it, but only try, only a little. So I asked my boyfriend to eat it when we will be alone, without witness (I didn't know how I would react). At the end... we finished one Sunday in his house, with all his family. And everybody was watching me and asking: what about ceviche? Did you like it? :D

 

The ingredient that both include is, of course, raw fish. But there is a basic difference: in ceviche you have other important ingredient that "cooks" the fish. I put the word cook between inverted commas because the Peruvian lemon, which I'm talking about, can't cook anything literally speaking. It's so acid that it coagulates the protein of the fish. In general, they abused the lemon!

Ok, but the fish is not all. It needs to be accompanied by the raw onion, which in contact with the lemon gives out a sap. The dressing that consists of lemon and onion sap is called leche de tigre that means tiger's milk. As you can see in the photos, in the plate they normally put also camote (sweet potato) and corn (which is huge there!! They said me that the corn we eat in Europe there is given to porks, cattle and village birds... Great.). The ceviche goes very well with a typical drink made from corn too. In this case is other type of corn, violet corn used only to prepare chicha morada (the name of the drink). For a better flavour it's good to add peel of pineapple, apples and quince.

      

What I've already described is the simplest recipe. Other variations of ceviche can consist, for example, of seafruits in stead of fish.

Perhaps right now you feel exactly what I felt just before try ceviche, a disgust. But I assure that it's not so terrible like you fell it, really! And, an important thing: ceviche is not a dish to eat every day. Mostely is a dish sirved for a special occasions or meetings with friends or family you have not seen for a long time.

Enjoy your meal! ;)

An introduction to the Peruvian food: Mistura

If I want to tell you about Peruvian food I should start with Mistura, which is the most important and well known gastronomic fair in Lima. It's name means in Peruvian Spanish "mixture" and it's because for a few days restaurants from different parts of the country get together, to the same place, with their flag dishes. There is a great variety that the organizers divide into sections: a section of sweets, another of tipples, another of seafood...

So you have a lot of stands. You pay with tickets that have their value, like banknotes. They sell them in kits, I could say. It means that it's only possible to pay 25, 50 or 100 soles (one sol, local currency, equal one zloty 20 grosz), although after you can buy only the tickets you need. When you enter crossing below a huge fork, you receive a map of the place. It helps you find restaurants you are looking for.

 

Of course, the queues used to be quite long, as in the case of the stand with pachamanca. It was the unique one with this dish. It consists of two types of meat you choose between chicken, beef and meat of alpaca that go with broad bean, potato and a sort of cake made with milled, hot corn with raisins enclosed in the leaf of corn. The preparation is very important: it should be made in the ground, ringed with stones. I have to confess that it's still a mistery for me whicha the details of the preparation, I didn't know them at all. You can see the dish and its preparation below.

 

We also tasted local beer Cusqueña, the tipple Ayahuasca (whose name refers to a strange plant that Peruvian indians use in their medicine rituals) or desserts like queso helado (frozen cheese). We spent a lot of money! But there were an aim in spent it and eat so much... It was that my mother challenged my boyfriend to make me put on weight. The result? They both lost! My genes didn't allow them reach this goal :D

That's all for today. Bye!

How Peru stole my heart

Hello everyone!

I'm back here, with a new concept of what is the folk. How you can see, I changed the graphics at the top of my blog. It's a typical peruvian folk design. In Peru you can find a lot of products made of fabrics like this: bags, t-shirts, pencil cases, blankets, backpacks, tablecloths, earrings, aprons, wallets and purses... Even shoes. I know it, because I came back from there three weeks ago and brought a lot of gadgets.

The first impression of Peru is that the folk is everywhere. And, of course, it's something that makes you fall in love in this country, but not the most powerfull factor. In my humble opinion what I willl never forget after the journey is how people treat you there. In Peru, althought you shouldn't trust in nobody (I mean, not only foreigners, but also Peruvians), you can feel that the Peruvians are very polite and they are able to do for you a lot when they know you a little. They are always eager to organize something, there's no bad ideas or things impossible to do. This nation is very sociable and spontaneous. 

 

Like says a rock song from there: "There can be poverty, but never solitude". That's truth - signs of poverty are more visible than in Europe, but you will never see them in your... plate. The Peruvians of our times inherited from their inca ancestors a belief according to which the gold hasn't got any value. The most valuable thing is the food. I will need another post to describe it for you, because the variety is extraordinary.

So, I mencioned three factors that made me fall in love in Peru: the omnipresent folk, great people and delicious food. The fourth one is my boyfriend who come from Lima. Sometimes I can't believe how it's possible to find somebody that hold the same believes and ideas that me, help me to be a better person and that doesn't care about the distance there is between us, doesn't consider it an obstacle. I feel very blessed and hopeful that it goes in good direction.

See you next week!