Food of the Andes

I love the Andes. I’ve lived and cooked there for more than 30 years. And I’ve written a cookbook which has sold more than 40,000 copies - Foods of Ecuador (Comidas del Ecuador). Now when I hear about Latino foods I’d like to think that our offerings, straight from the peoples of the glaciers and their country-folk on the coast were part of this cuisine. What I generally find is lots of material on Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean and I wonder where is South America….

Well, let’s start by presenting it to you, the world. The foods of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and the indigenous parts of Argentina and Chile are incredibly varied, full of new flavors and extremely interesting ingredients. Peru uses various dried chiles (ajíes) in dishes which link Inca, Spanish, Arab and Asian touches. Peru and Bolivia also use potatoes in ways you would never believe. In coastal Ecuador and the Pacific coast of Colombia, green plantains meld with seafood and coconut in smooth, rounded flavors. All of these countries have so much to offer the culinary world. Oh, and I particularly adore the mother grain quinoa. I prepare it in some of the traditional ways (like in soup or “atamalado”, still need to perfect quinoa “chicha”, the fermented drink of the Incas) AND I also use it in creations like popped quinoa in chocolate chip cookies or made into a pilaf to fill vegetables and smothered with dried porcini bechamel. In fact, porcinis are now grown and exported from the Andes, all over the world.

I’d love to share with you this ancient, delicious culinary heritage. Let me know what most interests you and I’ll do my best to answer questions, post recipes, to food talk the Andean way.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 1:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.