Excerpted from the late Eduardo Galeano’s Faces and Masks, part of the ‘80s-era Memory of Fire trilogy, here's a 12-hour rundown of antique Peruvian snacks, circa 1769. A running catalog of the toll of corporatist colonialism on the so-called “New World,” the book is particularly focused on charting historical upheavals via the metronomic march of the calendar, which adds a sense of strange menace to this seemingly innocent list of foods, many of them influenced by flavors and ingredients forcibly introduced from Spain. A few of these dishes are self-explanatory, although some others are not. “Curds seller,” to start, likely refers to vendors of Quesillo, a moniker that means something slightly different in every Latin American nation, in Peru signifying a fresh curd cheese still sold on the streets of Lima to this day. The “green velvet” Chirimoyas are the pale-colored, shingle-textured fruit also known as the “custard apple,” although this appellation applies to many of its cousins in the Annona/Soursop family (not including, strangely, the actual Soursop, aka Guanábana), which also includes the “Sugar Apple,” and the American Paw-Paw. Cherimoya means “cold seeds,” in the Quechua language, a reference to the high altitudes at which they are grown. More musings on custard apples, meanwhile, can be found in the second of my Colombia trip report posts.
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Croquetas + Croqueta Preparada: Croquettes are one of those foods which, despite their persistent presence in any number of cuisines, I tend to associate exclusively with the past, memories of both outmoded faux-French Continental cuisine and the ‘80s-excess-oriented buffet tables of my early youth. I remember finding a certain comfort in an item so closely resembling one of the few things I ate at the time: fish sticks. While the croquette usually has high-culture aspirations (despite, in my experience, being invariably filled with some goopy version of Chicken Cordon Bleu), the two things actually very similar in construction, with a whipped filling making up the soft center for a heavily breaded, log-shaped fritter. I stumbled upon a different iteration last year at an Indonesian restaurant, in a Dutch-derived form known as the Rissole, but didn’t think much of it.
Purple drinks, as we learned from Sunny D commercials of yore, are gross. Distilled into a toxic tone ordinarily reserved for poisonous berries, jellybeans and gourmet potatoes, a violet-hue in a beverage generally indicates some serious element of artificiality at play. Even fresh stuff like high-end grape juice doesn’t have much to offer the adult palette, and I say this as someone who spent a dozen years fiending for the stuff. I won’t say that any of this applies to chicha morada, since I’m not inclined to broad-brush an entire class of beverages based on experience with one Snapple-style version of it, but the drink’s mixture of corn-y wholesomeness and fruity sugar doesn’t exactly see to be my cup of maté. As for the Inca Foods version, after a few sips, the rich corn taste begins to dissipate, the sugar takes over, and we’re back in grape juice territory once again.
Chichas are a wide-ranging product of the South American corn belt, spanning from Nicaragua’s cold-brewed, banana-flavored chicha de maiz to Chilean apple and Bolivian amaranth varieties; the only real defining standard is maize as a primary ingredient. The morada style is most identified with Peru, where Andean corn culture has also produced the fermented chicha de jora and other styles produced from quinoa, molle seeds and chickpeas. Classic chicha morada is created by simmering purple corn (another exception to the ‘purple-is-poison’ rule, a regional staple which doubles as a dye source) in a broth of cinnamon, cloves and pineapple juice, which grants it a slightly acidic sweetness (lovely little illustrations of these items are pictured on the bottle, along with some imposter apples and pears). Inca’s take on morada does notably improve when mixed with seltzer, and I should note that I’ve had better luck with the company’s other products, specifically their jarred aji sauces, not to mention their fantastic website, which also features a few other as-yet-untried chicha varieties. |
The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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