Cuisine

Peruvian

Cocina peruana

Acid is a cooking method on the Peruvian coast, not a garnish. Ceviche is raw fish tossed with lime, red onion, chilli and salt until the surface turns opaque and the onion softens. Sweet potato and corn sit beside it to buffer the sting. Lomo saltado is a wok of beef, onion, tomato and soy — Chinese-Peruvian chifa technique on a steak cut, usually with chips. Ají de gallina is shredded chicken in a walnut-and-ají amarillo sauce, thick and mild-hot. Anticuchos are grilled, vinegar-marinated skewers, classically heart.

Andean potato and chilli agriculture, Pacific fish, Spanish colonial pots, Japanese Nikkei raw-fish practice and Chinese chifa wok cooking all sit on the same Lima street. Ceviche is older than the restaurant boom that made it an ambassador; the precise lime-cured plate people photograph is a modern coastal standard. Chifa dishes such as lomo saltado are Peruvian, not borrowed Chinese food waiting to be corrected. Ají de gallina likely descends from a European bread-thickened sauce rebuilt with local chilli. Chicha morada is purple corn boiled with pineapple and spice. Suspiro limeño is a limeño sweet of manjar and meringue.

Ají amarillo, rocoto and limo do different jobs; swapping a generic red chilli flattens the dish. Ceviche should be mixed close to serving so the fish does not go woolly. Lomo saltado needs wok heat high enough to catch the beef. Peruvian ajiaco in this kitchen is a potato-and-chilli pot, not the Colombian chicken soup of the same name. Coast, Andes and Amazon do not share one pantry.