Before we headed up into the Andes to visit Cusco and Machu Picchu, we spent a day in Lima. Just one. We figured we weren't really going to Peru to see Lima but couldn't just fly in one night and leave the very next morning either. So...what to do in 24 hours in Peru's capital city founded way back in 1535 by the conquistador Francisco Pizarro? Visit the historic center? Get out of town to see the Nazca Lines? Check out some pre-Inca ruins? Go surfing? Swimming with sea lions?
Nah, none of that. We decided to just go to the market and shop for groceries.
So, not really. But sort of. We really signed up for a cooking class. We knew when we booked this activity that we'd be heading to a market to find some foods we'd probably never heard of or seen before and then to a restaurant to prepare some food. We just didn't expect that the restaurant would be right in the middle of the market. Not that there was anything wrong with that. In fact, it might have been better to have stayed in the market.
I've been making latin food for a while now, ever since I taught myself to cook a little in upstate New York with a very limited Central and South American pantry before moving down to the Washington, D.C. area and finding that chiles (beyond serrano and jalapeño) and achiote and banana leaves and things like that really did exist in this country. But Peruvian food? Never really got that far south. I was excited to find some local ingredients and make something more indigenous to Lima.
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| Gotta have fish for ceviche. A couple of damselfish (or chromis chromis if you want to get technical) please! |
Cooking might have been a bit of a misnomer for what we chose to sign up for. We didn't actually use any flames or heat to make our lunch. We also didn't just settle for making a Peruvian sandwich. On the menu? A quick pisco sour, one of Peru's signature drinks, followed by some ceviche, which is probably the dish linked more with Lima than any other. I've made ceviche at home once before, but it was made with a decidedly Mexican emphasis, which is where I've tended to stop more than anywhere else in my cooking adventures. Let's do this one Peruvian style.
But first, some shopping. Welcome to the Surquillo district of Lima. Welcome to Mercado No. 1 (or Nro. 1 in Spanish).
This is definitely not your standard American supermarket. Or even your local farmers' market. For a start, there's a map. I mean I guess it's a good idea because the place is pretty big. Think city block sized with a couple of concentric rings of stalls and stands and restaurants making up the place. And you can get everything there. I think if it walks or grows or swims in or off the shore of Peru, they will have it at Mercado No. 1 at some time during the year.
We didn't buy meat in our quick morning shopping trip but we could have had our choice. Chickens? Got those! With head or without? Which ever way you want. Shellfish? Plenty! Fish fish? Yep, plenty of that too; after all, how else are you going to make ceviche without fish? To clarify here, we did use fish but just didn't shop for it. How about some beef? The only answer here is which part? Because you can get every part of the animal. We didn't check out all the choice cuts suitable for aging in a gourmet steakhouse back home but we did get a good long look at the stomach (tripe), tongue, liver, heart, lungs and some other parts which wouldn't be my first choice for dinner on a weekday. Or any day, for that matter.
But if I was taken aback a little by things that aren't available in the Safeway down the street from me in the butchery, at least I could recognize the animals. The fruits and vegetables were a different story.
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| Not sure I've ever seen cow lungs (second from left) just hanging from a hook before... |
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| or purple corn. Who knew there was such a thing? |
I like to think that the foods that I've cooked and the places I've been to have exposed me to a pretty broad range of things that grow on or under the surface of the Earth as well as on vines or trees. The very first food we tried in the market was a prickly pear fruit (otherwise known as a tuna) and I was proud to raise my hand when our guide asked if anyone had ever eaten one before (I made prickly pear sorbet once a long time ago). It was all downhill from there.
Purple corn? Who knew? Dried mushrooms that I can't recognize. And all artichokes don't look the same? What's up with that? Jars of stevia leaves? That's what goes in the little green packets in the diner, right? The sugar substitute that's not Nutrasweet? Maca? Caigua? I mean...what? Cherimoya? Roots that don't look anything like any sort of root I've ever seen except maybe for taro (which is delicious...yummy taro!). Chiles and citrus fruits that don't look like the ones we get at home. And sweet cucumber? That can't be good if tastes like anything resembling a cucumber. Yuck! to cucumbers. How are there all these foods I've never seen before in this one little market in Lima?
And that wasn't even exploring Peru's 4,000 different varieties of potatoes. 4,000 is NOT a typo!
And that wasn't even exploring Peru's 4,000 different varieties of potatoes. 4,000 is NOT a typo!
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| Pineapples, artichokes, some kind of squash (spaghetti maybe?), aji amarillo, eggplant and a root. |
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| A whole lot of cherimoya. |
After a quick circuit around pretty much every stall in the market (with a stop for a taste of some prickly pear tuna!) it was time to stop looking and time to start cooking. One cherimoya, a couple of aji limo, a sweet cucumber (please let it taste good!!!), some cilantro and a couple of red onions (thank God I know what something is that we are dealing with) and were are off to El Cevichano, a ceviche stand in the center of the market, where we met up with our other ingredients for the day: some pre-chopped damselfish, a bottle of pisco (Cuatro Gallos brand, if that means anything to you), a bottle of simple syrup, some eggs and a whole lot of lime juice. And I do mean a whole lot.
When I travel, I usually have a list of foods, drinks and dishes that I want to try. My Peru list had pretty much five things on it: a pisco sour drink, some chicha, alpaca, lomo saltado and ceviche. We were about to make two of those five. The one ingredient I hoped we'd cook with was an aji amarillo, or yellow chile, because it was the only Peruvian cooking ingredient that I could recognize. We saw some, but didn't use them; the aji limo was used instead. Aji,by the way, means chile. Didn't know that. Now I do.
First up: some fruit and a refreshing pisco sour. Pisco is a distilled spirit made from grapes. In other words, a brandy. It's pretty much the national drink of Peru. Or it is in my eyes anyway and it was a must have for me when visiting the country both straight out of the bottle and in mixed drink form. We used the modern 3-1-1 formula for making a sour, meaning three parts pisco to one part each simple syrup (sugar water) and lime. Add an egg white (I was asked if I know how to separate an egg for this like it's a skill that most 50 year old men do not possess), shake with ice, strain and finish with few drops of bitters. One pisco sour coming up!
Pisco, by the way, was invented when the importation of Peruvian wines was banned into Spain because the quality was too high. It was killing the Spanish wine industry. Faced with losing their product in the hot Peruvian summers, the winemakers decided to try their hand at distilling. And pisco was born.
And I do know how to separate an egg. I can't fix hardly anything that breaks around the house but I know how to separate eggs. And much more.
I thought I might bring myself back a bottle of pisco as a souvenir and a rare foray into the duty free shop on the way home. After a sip of Cuatros Gallos which I'd characterize as a mild flavored liquor that didn't burn on the swallow but didn't leave me craving more, I decided I'd pass. And the pisco sour? The first thing I blurted out was that it tastes like a margarita. Excuse me for being Mexico-centric but it did. It was good. I don't need one any more than I need a margarita. There's a time and a place.
The traditional way by the way to make a pisco sour? 4-1-1. Maybe I should have tried that.
Our fruit with our pisco sour? The sweet cucumber and our cherimoya, also known as the custard apple. Thank God the sweet cucumber was melon-y with very little actual taste rather than cucumber-y. Other than that it was forgettable. But the cherimoya? Pretty UN-forgettable. First, it's soft, almost liquid-like I guess (maybe smooth pear or...could it be custard?) with dense black inedible seeds. The taste is like Granny Smith-Jolly Rancher with hints of pear; sour and very, very intense. I'm not sure I'm eating a whole one of these ever but it was good. Very tasty.
Now that we were warmed up, it was time to make some ceviche. Our group (the two of us plus three other travelers from Australia and England) teamed up to slice some aji limo and the red onion and pick some cilantro off the stalks we had bought. If there was one dish we tried to track down at a restaurant in Lima and make a reservation before we landed, it was ceviche. I'd read about the many, many cevicherias all over town but found most only operated at lunch time since Peruvians generally choose to eat ceviche for lunch.
The problem with this is that we'd be cooking during our only noon-time while we were in the city. Lucky then that we'd be making the very dish we were seeking out. Maybe not as good or inventive as we could have eaten in a top cevicheria but there's something about making dishes yourself which is extremely satisfying.
We winged it. We made the whole thing by taste and sight. No recipe. Just trial and error. And I know that if you know me, this made me a little uneasy (HAVE to follow the recipe!). A couple of spoons of damselfish, a little aji limo, some onion, a dash or two or three of garlic-ginger mixture and a sprinkling of salt and white pepper. And lots of lime to cook the fish and some cilantro to finish.
That's right. The lime is our cooking agent here. I already said no flame remember. That's what makes ceviche ceviche. The acid in the lime juice changes the protein of the fish to make it appear and feel like it's been cooked. It took maybe five or six minutes for the fish to turn opaque and look like it was no longer raw. Taste. Adjust. Taste. Adjust. Repeat until just right. Then eat.
The fish-chile-onion variant of ceviche is typically Peruvian. No avocado or tomato like you might find somewhere more north like Central America. This is the dish classically prepared in the area of the world where it was thought to have been first invented. I've tried hard to find these types of dishes in my travels. I've just never had one that I've made myself before.
This is the first time I've traveled somewhere and cooked the local cuisine. I consider cooking to be a serious hobby and I'm glad I did this. If there's a complaint to be made, it's that the dish was fairly straightforward and simple. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'd love to try this again with something more advanced.
The big thrill for me here was walking the market and marveling at kinds of foods I either couldn't identify or those that I'd never seen the way they were displayed in Mercado Nro. 1. I sometimes leave a lot of pictures on the cutting room floor when I write these blog posts. Among the ones that didn't get posted were a freshly cleaned pile of cow bones, multiples pictures of chickens hanging upside down with their heads attached or not attached and vats of spicy sauces. I could have done this by myself I guess but it wouldn't have had the same pace and level of discussion. And no way would I have bought myself a custard apple.
First up: some fruit and a refreshing pisco sour. Pisco is a distilled spirit made from grapes. In other words, a brandy. It's pretty much the national drink of Peru. Or it is in my eyes anyway and it was a must have for me when visiting the country both straight out of the bottle and in mixed drink form. We used the modern 3-1-1 formula for making a sour, meaning three parts pisco to one part each simple syrup (sugar water) and lime. Add an egg white (I was asked if I know how to separate an egg for this like it's a skill that most 50 year old men do not possess), shake with ice, strain and finish with few drops of bitters. One pisco sour coming up!
Pisco, by the way, was invented when the importation of Peruvian wines was banned into Spain because the quality was too high. It was killing the Spanish wine industry. Faced with losing their product in the hot Peruvian summers, the winemakers decided to try their hand at distilling. And pisco was born.
And I do know how to separate an egg. I can't fix hardly anything that breaks around the house but I know how to separate eggs. And much more.
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| Pisco sour. What I traveled thousands of miles to taste. Had one later at a bar. That one was better than mine. |
The traditional way by the way to make a pisco sour? 4-1-1. Maybe I should have tried that.
Our fruit with our pisco sour? The sweet cucumber and our cherimoya, also known as the custard apple. Thank God the sweet cucumber was melon-y with very little actual taste rather than cucumber-y. Other than that it was forgettable. But the cherimoya? Pretty UN-forgettable. First, it's soft, almost liquid-like I guess (maybe smooth pear or...could it be custard?) with dense black inedible seeds. The taste is like Granny Smith-Jolly Rancher with hints of pear; sour and very, very intense. I'm not sure I'm eating a whole one of these ever but it was good. Very tasty.
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| Alejandro slicing into the custard apple. Sweet cucumber on the left. |
The problem with this is that we'd be cooking during our only noon-time while we were in the city. Lucky then that we'd be making the very dish we were seeking out. Maybe not as good or inventive as we could have eaten in a top cevicheria but there's something about making dishes yourself which is extremely satisfying.
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| Ready to start making ceviche. The purple liquid in the glass is chicha morada, a drink made from purple corn. |
That's right. The lime is our cooking agent here. I already said no flame remember. That's what makes ceviche ceviche. The acid in the lime juice changes the protein of the fish to make it appear and feel like it's been cooked. It took maybe five or six minutes for the fish to turn opaque and look like it was no longer raw. Taste. Adjust. Taste. Adjust. Repeat until just right. Then eat.
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| Chromis chromis with onions, cilantro, aji and lots of lime. |
This is the first time I've traveled somewhere and cooked the local cuisine. I consider cooking to be a serious hobby and I'm glad I did this. If there's a complaint to be made, it's that the dish was fairly straightforward and simple. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'd love to try this again with something more advanced.
The big thrill for me here was walking the market and marveling at kinds of foods I either couldn't identify or those that I'd never seen the way they were displayed in Mercado Nro. 1. I sometimes leave a lot of pictures on the cutting room floor when I write these blog posts. Among the ones that didn't get posted were a freshly cleaned pile of cow bones, multiples pictures of chickens hanging upside down with their heads attached or not attached and vats of spicy sauces. I could have done this by myself I guess but it wouldn't have had the same pace and level of discussion. And no way would I have bought myself a custard apple.
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| Mercado Nro. 1, Surquillo District, Lima. |
How We Did It
Mercado Nro. 1 is located in the Surquillo District of Lima. If you are staying in the Miraflores District (where a lot of tourists stay), it's just about an easy kilometer's walk from John F. Kennedy Park. It's open to all and walking around and buying produce was super simple.
If you opt to pick up some groceries, you probably can't sit yourself down and make your own ceviche at El Cevichano like we did unless you arrange it in advance. The only way I know to do that is to go through Best Bite Peru, which is exactly what we did. While our tour was a little bit different than described on their website (I believe we booked the "Cooking In Local Market" tour), it was nonetheless a great way to spend half a day in Lima. If you get Alejandro as your guide, tell him we said hi.
Mercado Nro. 1 is located in the Surquillo District of Lima. If you are staying in the Miraflores District (where a lot of tourists stay), it's just about an easy kilometer's walk from John F. Kennedy Park. It's open to all and walking around and buying produce was super simple.
If you opt to pick up some groceries, you probably can't sit yourself down and make your own ceviche at El Cevichano like we did unless you arrange it in advance. The only way I know to do that is to go through Best Bite Peru, which is exactly what we did. While our tour was a little bit different than described on their website (I believe we booked the "Cooking In Local Market" tour), it was nonetheless a great way to spend half a day in Lima. If you get Alejandro as your guide, tell him we said hi.
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