Meeting Alvero and market shopping

At 3.30pm, we made our way back to the market to meet up with Alvero, an ex-cruise ship chef turned cookery teacher, our guide and tutor for the Peruvian cookery class and market tour we had booked.  There were seven of us in the class including another couple from England, a couple from Washington DC, and a single traveller from the States who had just finished a chocolate workshop with lunch and was full before we started!

Our first stop in the market was at a fruit stall where we tried three different types of passion fruit, none of which bear any resemblance to the ones we get in the UK.  We had tried the Grenadillo and the large yellow mollar before on this trip, but the tumbo, a yellow banana-shaped variety, was new to us.  The latter had a sweet and sour taste.  It is said to aid digestion, and the juice is often used as an aperitif before a large meal.  Many Peruvian babies are weaned on it, too!  You just swallow the flesh and seeds.  Chewing the seeds can cause stomach irritation.  Tumbo is very high in vitamin C.  One fruit contains the same amount as six large oranges!  It is thought to have been used in the first Peruvian ceviche recipes.

We also tried lucuma.  Again, we had already tried it on our foodie tour in Lima.  There, I didn't particularly enjoy the taste or the texture.  Today, the fruit we tried was riper with an interesting maple flavour.  I could see how it could be used in ice creams and other desserts.

Our next stop was to try chuta, a sweet sharing bread made only in Orapesa, a village about 15 kilometres from Cusco.  These large, flattish breads are more like cakes and are stuffed with manjar (dulce de leche), jam, or chocolate spread, and decorated with ornate designs.  The basic recipe is always the same - flour, salt, sugar, yeast, shortening, eggs, anise, cinnamon, vanilla, and the key ingredient, glacial water from the nearby sacred Andean peak (apu), Pachatusan.  I vowed to come back before we return to the truck to buy some for us all to share.

We then went to a stall selling chulpi, roasted corn kernels served as a snack with drinks, and also used as a crunchy topping on ceviche.  We saw many of the 55 varieties of corn grown in Peru, including some with enormous kernels used in fish and chicken soups.  At the same stall, Alvero explained to us about the testosterone and oestrogen-producing properties of maca.  Eating maca every day can help to lower blood pressure, reduce and fight the symptoms of menopause, increase and improve fertility in both men and women, and fight osteoporosis in women.  You just have to make sure you take the correct type - black for men only, red for women, and yellow for everyone.

Next on the list to try was cheese.  There were some very attractive fresh cheeses made with unpasteurised milk and stamped with the name of the farm that produced them.  We tried an orange-coloured Cheddar-like cheese, which we bought to use in a dish later, and a hard cheese flavoured with pepper.  I was drawn to a smoked cheese, which we will have to come back to buy another day.Read more