This Post Will Make Your Mouth Water

Imagine that you and your friend both bought chicken salad sandwiches from competing delicatessens. Your sandwich has raisins and walnuts, and it’s served on rye bread with a side of potato chips. Your friend’s sandwich has sliced apples, an aioli sauce, and is served on wheat bread with a side of coleslaw. This slight ingredient variation may be grounds for a fun taste test and a lively competition of sandwich deliciousness, but it would hardly suffice to deny either sandwich its space in the category of Chicken Salad Sandwich.  Nor would a suggestion to a chicken salad chef that she include carrots in her recipe elicit a horrified reaction and a response that nearly has you in tears. Raisins or apples, rye or wheat, carrots or no carrots: what’s the difference, right?

That’s in the Unites States, a country with no national cuisine and few food traditions. Apart from our God-given right to drown french fries with ketchup, we don’t have rights, rules, or certainties when it comes to food.

But Peru is a land of platos típicos where a garnish of a hard boiled egg and an olive is a requirement for every plate of aji de gallina (spicy shredded chicken). Where the suggestion to include carrots in arroz chaufa (Peruvian fried rice) will nearly set off an angry mob, because everyone knows that carrots will change the flavor of the soy sauce drenched dish. Where lentils must be served with meat. Where watermelon is strictly a snack for mid-morning and early-afternoon because, eaten at any other time, it causes a horrible stomach ache. Oatmeal must be watery enough to drink. Acopa sauce must be made with salty crackers, not with sweet crackers. Quinoa can’t be eaten at night because it’s too heavy for the stomach. Cold beer cannot be drunk while eating chicharrón de chancho (fried pork) because the resulting stomach condition will mimic dysentery. Where people turn up their noses at peanut butter but eat cow stomach and pig liver with great zest. Where a chef in the north of the country and my host grandmother in the south of the country serve escabeche de pollo and papas a la huancaina exactly the same, right down to the sauce ingredients and the plate garnishes.

Before I came to Peru, a returning volunteer warned me, “Peruvians don’t just like their food, they’re obsessed with it.” She was right; Peruvian food culture is as fascinating and intricate as Peruvian food is delicious. Luckily, Peruvians are also forgiving when foreigners make silly mistakes regarding food (like suggesting we use black pepper instead of just salt or asking if there is supposed to be lettuce in this salad of raw red onions and tomatoes). And Peruvian forgiveness, like Peruvian love, is usually shown with a plate of mouth-watering comida típica.

It would be impossible to list every incredible food, interesting fruit, and delectable juice I’ve had down here – you’ll just have to visit and see for yourself!