Apart from reading and music, my great passions in life are eating and sleeping. Since sleeping was impossible in the din of Leoncio Prado, I spent much of my waking hours eating or planning to eat. My menu usually looked like this:
BREAKFASTThere were variations. Roast pork and marinated turnip at a chifa in Magdalena, lucuma ice cream and churros at Manolo in Miraflores, green tamales and shrimp cebiche at an out-of-the-way restaurant behind the Parque de las Leyendas, poached trout at the Hotel El Olivar de San Isidro, roast guinea pig at the Characato de Oro in San Borja (actually, my wife ate the roast guinea pig, I only watched). For every few days of overindulgence, I did penance by restricting my diet to regular doses of Pepto-Bismol and light fare. As my system returned to normal, I could resume sampling the wonderful things the country had to offer.
Tamal or panettone
Essence of coffee (café puro) only slightly diluted
LUNCH
Ocopa or cebiche
Lomo saltado or rotisserie chicken
Campari and soda chased by Cuzqueña beer
AFTERNOON SNACK
Ice cream or churros
Espresso
DINNER
Specialty of the house
Ocucaje Sauvignon Blanc or Tacama Vino Blanco
BEDTIME SNACK
Cancha and beer
Alfajores
When I die I want to have
this planted on my grave. This is huacatay, the
secret ingredient in ocopa. It has an enigmatic aroma
(which I'll upload as soon as they work out how to transmit
smell over the Internet), and is absolutely unobtainable
where I live. Pickled and canned, it is sold in Latin groceries
in D.C. as "black mint," which is utterly disappointing.
Some Peruvian expatriates substitute basil, which is even worse.
To make real ocopa, you've got to have real huacatay.
If you know someone who has it, offer him your house and
your first-born in exchange for some. You won't be sorry.
Once you get huacatay, proceed as follows. Prepare six of your favorite hot peppers in whatever way you're used to doing it. Sautee some garlic and onions with the peppers. Take a handful of hulled roasted peanuts, 5 saltine crackers, 3 vanilla wafers, half a pound of farmer's cheese, some huacatay, a half can of evaporated milk, and put all this in the blender along with the garlic, onions, and peppers. Blend until uniform. You may need to add a bit more milk or crackers to get the right consistency. Now, set some sliced boiled potatoes on a plate along with some hard-boiled eggs, black olives, lettuce, and shrimps (if you hit the numbers that week) and dress with the sauce.
(If you can't get huacatay where you live, simply print the image above on a good color printer, shred it, and stick it in the blender.)
The other thing I would like on
my grave is a lucuma tree. Then I know I'll never run
out of these. No, I can't describe what they taste like. I'll
upload the aroma later. For now, you'll have to go to Peru and
get yourself some. Try the lucuma ice cream.
My previous experience with the rocoto was a pair of fresh chilis which my father-in-law had managed to smuggle in on his last visit to the States. They were perfect specimens, plump, round, fire-engine red. A few slivers added the needed punch to any dish. Any more than that sent one looking for a fire extinguisher.
Despite repeated warnings from my wife, I was eager to try rocoto relleno. So the night before I was to return home, my mother-in-law lovingly opened and blanched the rocotos, prepared a ground-beef filling, stuffed each pepper, and popped them in the oven. She proudly set the finished peppers before me and served me one.
It was the hottest thing I'd ever had in my life. I managed to finish the filling and about a third of the pepper itself, followed by a half a quart of chicha morada. My mouth felt like the business end of a Saturn-V rocket, but I had survived. My night's sleep was punctuated by bouts of indigestion that grew progressively worse. My wife said I shouldn't have eaten the rocoto, that I would never learn to stop abusing my stomach, that I should stay in Peru until I got better. "I'm OK," I said, as I crawled out onto the tarmac toward my waiting plane.
Upon my return, I was treated
to some papa rellena; stuffed potatoes. These require no
special ingredients. Just boil a big potful of potatoes, peel and
mash coarsely (my wife uses a potato ricer). Brown ground beef
with garlic, onions, cumin, raisins, and chopped hard-boiled
egg. Fire up a wok with at
least a 1/4-inch of hot oil. Spread out a layer of mashed potato a bit
larger than your hand, fill with a spoonful of the meat, then
roll up the sides of the potato layer and close it up. Wash with
beaten egg and fry in the oil until it gets a nice golden layer
like you see here. Very labor intensive, but worth it!