There are so many different amazing Peruvian Criollo
foods, it’s hard to pick a favorite.  I have an idea what the most searched for recipe is, but just for fun – I’d like to see what your opinions are – What is your favorite Peruvian Criollo dish?

Take Our Poll

My mom was here visiting a few weeks ago, and while she was here, we watched the movie “The Help”.  I thought it was a really good movie, if you can overlook the idea that “the help”  were portrayed as  not having the courage to help themselves without the help of the lovely white heroine.

But that’s not what struck me most.

What really occurred to me as I watched the movie was the similarities between America circa 1960 and today’s Lima, Peru.  (and I’m limiting this to Lima, because I don’t know what the situation is like in other cities, but I imagine anywhere people have money, it’s similar)

I’ll say it – I’ve got a maid. In fact, I’ve got two – Eliza and her mom, Maruja.  Eliza used to work full time for us, but now she’s in classes full time so had to cut back to one day a week.  One day wasn’t enough to keep up with what I can’t get to, so now Maruja comes on Wednesdays.

When they’re here, yes, they use our bathrooms; yes, they eat lunch with us. In fact, when they finish work they take a shower before heading home.  In my bathroom.

I don’t say this to make myself sound like some sort of saint, only to point out the difference between what is “typical” in Peru.

I had an English student a few years ago who chastised me for letting our first maid Ana eat at the table with my kids. His opinion was that by letting her be  ”familiar” with my family, she would get “uppity”.  These weren’t his exact words, of course, because he was speaking Spanish –  but it was very much the intended meaning.

Like in “The Help”, it’s not always usual for the maid to use the home-owner’s bathroom. Many larger houses in Lima have a “cuarto de servicio” – the servant’s room, which includes a small bathroom.  If you ask why the maid needs her own bathroom, you’ll be told that it’s more comfortable for the maid, that she wouldn’t like using the family’s bathroom.

But if you keep digging, you’ll hear other things. A lot of maids come to Lima from the provincias, and as I’ve been told “they’re dirty, they don’t know a lot about hygiene.”

Gee, sounds more and more like “The Help” all the time.

When wealthy families head to the beaches, they often take “the help” with them to help watch the children.  It used to be that maids and nannies would be required to stay in uniform while on the beach, but a recent law passed making that unlawful.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still happen. They also aren’t allowed to swim in the water until the families get out for the day.  It would be “unseemly” for the help to be swimming and playing alongside the family – can’t have them sullying up our pristine waters.

These kinds of attitudes astound me.

It’s almost incredible to think that these attitudes were prevalent in the US in my lifetime.  When you remember things like separate water fountains, and “negro entrances” at the movie house, you think of it as something from the past. Then you move to Peru and you read about a man not being allowed entrance into the the cinema because of his “provincial” appearance.  (Never mind that he had already been inside with his “whiter” friends and had just stepped out to use the restroom…)

Things are improving, though. LIke I mentioned above, there’s a law now saying that people can’t force their maids and nannies to wear uniforms outside; of course, it’s still done, but at least the law is written. With time and with more people becoming sensitive to the issue, there will hopefully be more enforcement. Hopefully, younger generations that are more exposed to the world through social media can have more enlightened attitudes than their parents.

And the movie theater incident? They were reviled in the media and closed down for a week by the government, plus fined about $560. It might not seem like much, but it is a start.

Anyone raising kids in Peru knows that once school is out, it’s time for “talleres” or summer programs.

Taller literally translates to “workshop” and just like in English, it can refer to the place where you do some sort of work or to something like a learning workshop or lesson.

When the boys were smaller, we used to sign them up for swimming every year, and as they got older and both developed a love of drawing anime, they went to art workshops.

But now that they’re both in their teens – Chato will be 13 this year, close enough – all they’re interested in is football (or soccer, as we from the US call it).

Signing them up for a program is always a hassle – the Hubs never fails to wait until the last minute, and always wants to send them to the “best” academy. Some of these places cost in the 100s of soles per month, and are run by different football clubs. Then, of course by the time we find one that he thinks is good enough (and I think is affordable enough), we’re already late and catching up with Christmas bills.

There was another wrinkle this year – Chato failed one of his classes, so has to go to summer school three days a week. So, he decided he didn’t want to do any other talleres because he wouldn’t have any free time over the summer to just hang out with his friends. Bummer, because soccer workshop and guitar lessons were his Christmas presents!  Of course, it wasn’t long before he changed his mind and wanted to do it after all – but not before we’d already got Chino signed up for his.

Usually schools will have programs too for the summer – some popular summer workshops include folk dancing, robotics, computing, karate or cooking.  I suppose none are as popular as football for the boys though!

If you’re in Peru with kids, what summer programs do they look forward to?

Guest post by Laura Elise

Peru is full of gastronomic treats and cultural treasures, and you can experience both in a single cup of tea.

Coca tea, also called mate de coca, is a wonderfully simple drink indigenous to the Andes. At its most basic, the drink follows a simple formula: pour hot water over dried coca leaves. Thanks to commercialization the tea is now also found in processed tea bags sold in supermarkets across the country. Both forms result in a natural taste similar to green tea.

So the tasty part is pretty evident, but where’s the culture?

Cultivation of coca leaves dates back 4,000 years, long before the Incas were about. Ancient Andean cultures primarily chewed the leaves (rather than brewing them) to alleviate altitude sickness and to act as a stimulant, which allowed them to work harder and longer. The coca plant contains alkaloids similar to those found in caffeine, resulting in an energy boost felt most strongly when consumed directly.

Perhaps because of its importance and prevalence in daily life, the coca leaf became sacred among these cultures. The Incas, in particular, treasured this “divine plant” and used it in rituals and religious ceremonies. They began large-scale coca cultivation but the practice was curtailed by the arrival of the Spanish, who decried coca consumption as “an agent of idolatry and sorcery.” This anti-coca position was partially reversed when the conquerors of the Incan Empire realized the benefits of allowing their “laborers” to chew coca to increase work performance, and the ruling class ended up taxing the trade of coca rather than completely outlawing it.

Today, coca is still chewed in indigenous cultures, although the tea form is much more prevalent. A steaming cup is presented to tourists upon arrival in most Cuzco hotels, a welcoming cultural gesture and way to keep guests from zonking out due to the city’s soaring altitude.

Though the drink is enjoyed throughout Peru, even in lower altitude cities like Lima, taking the tea outside the country is often illegal. Demonized due to it distant relation to cocaine, which also originates from the coca plant, many countries consider consumption of any part of the plant illegal. According to the US State Department: “Possession of these tea bags, which are sold in most Peruvian supermarkets, is illegal in the United States.”

Controversy aside, coca tea is a quaint drink that encompasses Peru’s unique environment, culture, and history. Most Machu Picchu tours touch upon ancient customs and modern culture, but for a more in-depth history of Peru and its ancient cultures, consider Peru luxury tours that feature multiple destinations.

Now this is an unusual start to posting in the New Year!

In Peru (and as I’ve learned, in much of South America and Asia), there’s a little appliance used by people to assist with .. shall we say … personal cleanliness after doing their business in the bathroom.

See, a bidet would be nice and all, but not a lot of people can afford one – or have space for one in a standard bathroom.

So it’s much simpler just to attach a hose to the water pipe under the loo and put a sprayer attachment (like the kind you have on your kitchen sink) on there! I’ve heard a few names for it – the poorman’s bidet, the bum gun, or simply “butt hose”.

Now it’s probably just my provincial North Americanism talking here, but until I’d moved to Peru such an ingenious little device had never occured to me. And it really is brilliant.

First of all, toilet paper is a big problem here. The quality isn’t good, and for a variety of reasons, in most places you can’t flush it.  So when you use it, you have to put it in the trash can.  Cleaning well with a strong spray of water eliminates a lot of the ick factor there.

Second – a lot of sewage seems to find its way to the ocean. Yeah, nasty. So the less stuff that needs to be flushed, the better, in myopinion.

Apart from those pros – there’s the personal cleanliness. It just feels cleaner. And if something you ate has given you a little problem with Pachacutec’s Revenge (or the “dear-rears” as my nephew Nick says), it is definitely a gentler method of keeping things clean.

So sing praises to the mighty bum gun – Keeping Peruvian potos clean for generations.

I hope all my friends out there in cyberspace have made it into the New Year safely! News reports here in Lima say that the bomberos were called out to more than 50 fires in the early morning hours, thanks (or no thanks) to the insane quantity of illegal fireworks that were going off.

Seriously – it sounded like a war zone and went non-stop until about 12:30, then was sporadic until well after 1am. There’ve been a few little bursts out in the neighborhood today, even – which of course sends all the dogs scurrying under my desk!

The last couple of weeks have been a blur of activity with my mother here visiting.  Last weekend, we were lucky enough to make a trip out to the Westfalia orphanage in Cieneguilla (just past La Molina, more or less).  I had a couple of boxes of clothes that the boys had outgrown as well as quite a few books.  The kids out there are just as sweet and happy as kids can be – we saw a lot of happy faces that day, as they’d recently received their Christmas gifts – it looked like a lot of them got skates!

We also spent a great day exploring Barranco – it’s funny, when you live here you forget sometimes how many fun things there are to do close-by. We walked across the “Puente de Suspiros” (Bridge of Sighs) and sightseeing along the Malecon.  In the months before I moved to Lima (nearly 8 years ago!), I searched the internet for photos of the city – one of my favorites was very similar to this one my mom took of the “Puente”.

Afterwards, we stopped by some florists and picked up flowers for the neighbor.

We also did a lot of shopping – Mom decided that she’d do her Christmas shopping while she was here and take gifts home with her. It coincided nicely with our shopping. I managed to get the Hubs to take some time off from driving his taxi to chauffeur US around. His kindness was repaid by Mom with his first trip to T.G.I.Fridays – he loved his Jack Daniel’s glazed ribs!

But now Mom’s gone home – her plane left today at noon – so it’s going to be back to work for me! I’ve had a great couple of weeks off from working, but my typing fingers are getting itchy and ready to get back into the swing of things.

I wish everyone very a healthy and happy new year – may 2012 be the best every (and hopefully not the last!)

To all my regular readers and to anyone who stumbled upon us in your journey across the internet – We wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

We’ve got some exciting stuff coming up in the new year – look for lots more travel information and a book!

It’s been a while since I posted a good recipe, hasn’t it!  And tallarin rojo is one of those recipes that is a Peruvian standard that for some reason I’ve just never gotten around to writing about.

You know how I feel about having rice with every meal.  And if you don’t know – blech, I’m tired of it! And Chato isn’t a big rice fan either, so I’m always happy to be able to make any kind of pasta dish.

However, the truth is that I very rarely make tallarin rojo, because I prefer regular Italian style spaghetti. I think it has a stronger flavor that I prefer. If I’m going to cook Peruvian style tallarin, I usually go with the basil/spinach-y tallarin verde.

But I figure that in order to be thorough here on the blog, I should post this one too. My recipe is a combination of Gaston Acurio’s cookbook recipe and my mother-in-law’s, plus a little bit of stuff I threw in for flava.

Tallarin Rojo Peruano for 6

Ingredients:

• 6 pieces of chicken – I use the legs, thighs and wings.
• Oil for cooking
• 1 cup diced onion
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 2 tbsp aji panca paste
• 3 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup finely chopped mushrooms
• 3-4 tomatoes, peeled, deseeded, finely diced or pulsed in the food processor (should be about 1 cup)
• 1 cup grated carrot
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 3-4 tbsp tomato sauce
• Salt/pepper to taste
• 1/2 kg spaghetti or linguine noodles (1 lb)
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan

Directions:

1. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper, then sear them on both sides in a bit of cooking oil.  Set aside.
2. In a large pot, saute the onion in a little oil.
3. When the onion is translucent, add the garlic, aji panca, bay leaf, mushrooms, tomato and carrot. Cook until the mushrooms are soft and the mix begins to caramelize a bit.
4. Add 4 cups of chicken stock and the tomato sauce and stir together, then add the chicken pieces.
5. Cover and cook over low heat for about 20 minutes, adding more liquid if necessary.
6. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a pot of boiling water until al dente, then drain the water.
7. In a large skillet, melt 4 tbsp of butter, add the pasta and stir together with the parmesan.  Pour the sauce over the pasta and mix well.
8. Cook together for a few minutes so that the pasta absorbs the liquid. Add salt and pepper to taste.
9. Serve on a plate with a piece of chicken on top and papas a la huancaina as a side dish.

* This makes a very saucy tallarin – a lot of Peruvians serve it “drier”. You may want to start with 2 cups of chicken stock instead of four.

This recipe is also very forgiving – I made it today without carrots or mushrooms, added a full packet of tomato sauce and a pack of tomato paste to thicken it a bit AND – after I had the sauce cooking, realized I didn’t have any tallarines! I ended up making it with macaroni noodles, and the boys loved it.

And I feel fine…..

Sorry, REM, didn’t mean to rip off your song!

But man – has this year passed by fast or WHAT??

Because I work in internet marketing, I’m always thinking months ahead – I start thinking about Easter in January, Halloween in April, Christmas in June.  And then all of a sudden, here it is upon me, and I feel like it’s all happened so suddenly and caught me so unaware.

They always say that as a blogger, you should never apologize for lapses in your posting, that most people barely notice it anyway, and that it’s really kind of self-centered to think that people are hanging on your every word, waiting for your posts. I see the point there – but I’ve had a couple people message me asking if everything’s ok with me because I’ve not been posting much, so I want it known that yes, I’m alive and fine – just busier than I expected to be.

First of all, as I think I mentioned, I lost my housekeeper Elizabeth. She’s been going to school part time to become a teacher, and her classes switched over to full time at the end of October.  We’ve been asking everyone we know for recommendations, even did the unthinkable and put an ad in the paper – and still haven’t found anyone that fit in with what we’re looking for.

So I said screw it, and called Eliza to ask if she was interested in working on her day off from classes. She jumped at the chance! Yay! So.. no, I don’t have the full time, live in help that I was hoping for, but I do have someone that I know and like (and TRUST) coming at least once a week to get the big things taken care of for me.

Of course, that means that I’m still doing all the day to day house cleaning, cooking and laundry.  The boys were a hard sell the first month or two, but they’re starting to pick up the slack and help out more. Chino in particular is really lending a hand – makes his bed every day without being told, does any chore I throw at him without complaining. I think we’re finally over the hump with that kid, especially since his mother kicked him out of her house.  I guess he realized he had no where left to go, and that he needed to make it work here.

Anyway, I digress.

My mother is also coming to visit in a couple of month’s, so we’re really looking forward to that! Haven’t seen her in well over a year. Of course, with Facebook and Skype, it doesn’t really seem like it’s been that long. The boys are super excited to have her coming back to visit.

We still aren’t sure what we’re going to do for Christmas – we’ll figure something out, eventually.

The point of all this being – I’m really busy! Between actual work that makes me money and housework, I’ve barely got a minute to think.  The kids are preparing for final exams, so we’re doing a lot of studying together, too.  So, I haven’t been posting as much, and I’ve missed y’all!

I should have done my meal plan Monday, and didn’t do it – last week either! At least this Monday I actually made one; last week we got take-out all week! If you know Peruvian criollo restaurants, you know that’s really the same thing as cooking at home.  It’s funny – in the US, we go out to eat to get stuff that’s different from what we cook at home; in Lima, the restaurants serve all the same dishes that people cook in their own kitchen!! We had aji de gallina, fried chicken with rice and beans, seco de carne. And all cooked from scratch, too.  If I didn’t like my own cooking better, I’d say buy it from a restaurant every day – it certainly saves me time!

So – I shall try to do better for the rest of this month, but I’m not making any promises.  I do have a couple of recipes I want to post – a Peruvian chicken and pasta dish, and a my mom is bringing my grandmother’s molded cranberry salad recipe which I will share too – that’s a good one for the holidays!

I did have one thing to share here (and I don’t usually do this, but hey, maybe it’ll help someone out with Christmas shopping!) – Amazon.com is having a great sale on some of their top rated breadmakers, so if you’re in the market for one, this is a great time to pick one up.

Also – if you enjoy the blog here, and would like to help us out with hosting costs and such, all you have to do is shop at Amazon! If you’re going to be purchasing some Christmas gifts online anyway, just click on the big Amazon banner link over on the far right; then if you make a purchases, Amazon will throw a few pennies my way – and it doesn’t cost you a dime! Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all!

Guest post by Maureen Santucci

Peru is a fantastic destination for lovers of adventure holidays. There is a huge variety of sporting activities available and mountain biking is definitely one of them. The Sacred Valley, located just outside of Cusco, is a particularly good location for it.

The climate in the Valley is much warmer than Cusco and it is at a lower altitude as well. This makes it a great place for acclimating while being active. There are many different tours available and you can choose from ones that offer only biking or others that include visits to tourist attractions along the way.

A lot of people find this a good way to combine being active while seeing some of the sites the area has to offer. This can be particularly helpful if your travel time is limited. One of the typical mountain biking tours available includes visits to Maras, Moray and Salineras, three locations worth visiting but not part of the typical Sacred Valley Tour. Others may include the more typical locations such as Ollantaytambo, Chinchero or Pisac.

Some tours offer strictly biking, with no stops to visit specific sites. That being said, it’s difficult to bike or trek anywhere in Cusco and the Valley without running into some Inca ruins. They are literally everywhere. When you combine those with the beautiful landscapes, ice-capped mountains in the distance, lakes, rivers and small typical villages where people have lived in the same way for years, your eyes will have a visual feast no matter what tour you choose.

There are some tours that are perfect for people who aren’t experienced cyclists while others can be of the more extreme sport variety, allowing for hair-raising pelts down steep mountain passes. A word of caution… before booking your tour, be sure to find out about the quality of the equipment that is being used. If you’re really serious about biking and plan on spending most or all of your time in Peru doing so, it may actually be worth bringing your own bike with you.

Tours come in varying lengths, from half-day to full day, and can be started either from Cusco or from within the Valley itself. Some people opt to spend the night in the Valley so that they can get right on their bikes and riding sooner. For those who want more than a single day of biking, multi-day tours can be arranged that start in the Sacred Valley and end up in Machu Picchu.

Contact a travel agent for more details on other Peru adventure tours to enjoy either before or after your trip to Machu Picchu while visiting the Cusco and Sacred Valley area.