Quinoa and corn in the San Pedro market, Cusco.
I didn’t know much about Peruvian food before our trip but I soon found out it’s delicious. Quinoa, corn and potatoes are staples, although according to our guide quinoa has only become trendy in recent years. It's gluten-free, packed with protein and lends itself to all kinds of recipes. We had quinoa for breakfast, for lunch (in fresh-tasting salads) and for dinner in soups, quinottos (a quinoa risotto) and side dishes. Stalls in the San Pedro market in Cusco are stocked with varieties of quinoa. Because it grows well in the cold and tolerates fairly poor soils, the Inca people grew quinoa on their higher terraces, along with potatoes, while corn was grown at lower elevations.
I didn’t know much about Peruvian food before our trip but I soon found out it’s delicious. Quinoa, corn and potatoes are staples, although according to our guide quinoa has only become trendy in recent years. It's gluten-free, packed with protein and lends itself to all kinds of recipes. We had quinoa for breakfast, for lunch (in fresh-tasting salads) and for dinner in soups, quinottos (a quinoa risotto) and side dishes. Stalls in the San Pedro market in Cusco are stocked with varieties of quinoa. Because it grows well in the cold and tolerates fairly poor soils, the Inca people grew quinoa on their higher terraces, along with potatoes, while corn was grown at lower elevations.
Quechuan woman drying her potatoes in the sun. Peru has 3 maybe 4,000 varieties of potatoes. Because of its potato diversity Peru has never suffered the devastation of a diseased crop such as the one that brought the potato famine in Ireland. A very knobby kind of potato was used to test the skill of a potential wife - if she could peel the potato and all its knobs in one go without removing too much of the tuber she was a keeper. We ate potatoes in soups, with meat, slathered in a delicious yellow-pepper sauce (more on that in a later post) and in a form I just could not learn to love: moraya potatoes.
Corn and moraya potatoes. As best as I could tell from the way it was described to us moraya potatoes have been freeze dried (sometimes peeled and sometimes not) and then stored, sometimes for years. In the market the peeled varieties are white and as light as styroform balls. First they’re soaked in a stream and then left out overnight in the cold to freeze and break down the cell structure. Then the water is pressed out of them and they’re left out in the sun to dry. The result, when the potatoes are reconstituted, is a chewy tuber without much flavor. If your crop has failed I can see why these would be better than nothing to eat but given a choice I’ll skip the moraya thank you.
Corn with cheese. The corn in Peru is very different from the corn we’re used to in the US. The kernels are often huge, white, starchy and not very sweet. Corn with cheese is a popular snack sold at the markets and on the streets. The salty rubbery cheese provides a delicious contrast to the starchy corn: protein and carbohydrate to fill an empty stomach.
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