SPICERY TRAVEL BLOG

The Mystical Peruvian chilli pepper and the spicy flavour of death

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Written by Toby
Published on 21st July 2016 at 14:20 • No comments yet, be the first!

When I was informed that South America is unchartered territory for The Spicery, I was gobsmacked, I assumed we had collectively travelled all over the world, but this would be a first and I was determined to leave a Spicery mark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had been travelling in Argentina, Chile and Bolivia already, and while the food was delicious [Probably had the best BBQ I have ever had nestled in the Patagonian mountains], the magical Peruvian chillies had me captivated.

Everyone has heard of the famous Peruvian Cevicheand tales of Guinea Pigs [in this case the cliché of everything slightly unusual tasting like chicken is correct] but having travelled around the majority of Peru for three weeks and visiting various markets and sampling local foods I wanted to get into the finer details of Peru’s most widely used seasoning. So gather round and indulge in an enthralling bedtime story containing murder and folklore.

 

According to Peruvian oral history, the chilli pepper once had a sweet flavour, and it converted to spicy when a young girl was murdered by her own mother for having eaten several peppers against her mother’s wishes. The story that goes that many years later, a beautiful pepper plant grew above the child’s grave, and it brought with it the spicy and bitter flavour it now has, as punishment for her murder.

 

Now, at the time this seemed like a completely feasible story, but that must have been the altitude talking and being tucked away in the Sacred Valley of the Incas I was probably in a gullible mood. But this is what the locals believed and with the incredible surroundings of the Sacred Valley and their way of life, it is easy to do so.

 

Enter in our ingredient of the month, the Panca Chilli or Aji Panca as it’s known in South America is the second most widely used chilli in Peru, the Aji Amarillo. Measuring at a meagre 500 on the Scoville Scale it possesses a rather smoky, sweet, berry like flavour, and I had it in many dishes ranging from stews and fishy dishes nearer the coast. Like many chillies in Peru, it is sundried at the farms and sold dry, the peppers are then deseeded and deveined resulting in the very mild heat.

The fruity flavour of the chili has left many avenues of uses, but check out the ingredient of the month section for a moorish Panca Chili chocolate pot recipe. On the other end of the spectrum is the Rocoto chilli pepper. It can be easily mistaken for your normal average red pepper, so if you ever find yourself at a Peruvian salad bar, take caution! The Rocoto chilli ranges from 50,000 to 250,000 on the scoville scale, putting it up there with the Jalapeno and scotch bonnet. The Rocoto is one amazing pepper, it has very thick walls, like a bell pepper, but is very hot. It is one of the oldest domesticated peppers, up to 5000 years old and was used by the Incas in Peru and Bolivia, and unusually it is able to withstand cold temperatures.

Farmers hand pick the chillies themselves, in an highly labour intensive process. They also try to avoid touching their eyes and face, as this could cause some serious pain. I was told the farmers can pick and eat them fresh straight away, and even though I like to think myself as someone who can handle their chilli, this was too much for me. I requested for an alternative, unfortunately I was to receive the chilli still but in a much more edible way.

 

The Rocoto Relleno or ‘stuffed pepper’ is a dish with Peruvian and Spanish origin and consists of the fresh pepper stuffed with ground beef, olives, fresh cheese and spices and then covered in a flour batter, and fried. Punchy and crispy, I couldn’t help but think this was the Peruvian version of the battered sausage. One of the characteristics of this dish in Cusco is that it is traditionally accompanied by the drink chicha made from corn that you can enjoy in picanterias all over the region of Cusco.

 

Cusco is a fine city which consists of an eclectic mix of Spanish colonial architecture and mind-blowing Incan structures. Cusco you feel permanently belongs in a National Geographic magazine, and at the heart of the Incan empire it was rich with history and tradition, and of course delicious potatoes!

 

According to oral traditions of the rural population of Peru, the genesis of the potato was thanks to divine intervention. When the inhabitants of an Andean village were in need of food, and began to die of starvation, the story goes that the gods sent them a product that appeared on earth pretending to have the fruits on the stem, when actually they were concealed near the root of the plant. This allowed them to be safe for people to find, and so the potato helped them survive.

  

 

The creation of the now famous dish, causa rellena or literally translated as ‘stuffed cause’ came from the time when Peru was at war with Chile. In those days the mothers of young fighters sent messages to their sons stuffed in their food; inside a ball made of mashed potato lemon and chilli peppers. At the end of the message their mothers would write ‘for the cause’ to give them support to continue fighting for the country. I was lucky enough to receive an ‘edible’ message while camped out on a frosty morning in the Peruvian Andes, cooked with some seriously basic utensils. 

 

 

 

Using chilli in your cooking can often be daunting, but is a brilliant source of flavour and of course heat. The Peruvians have seemed to have nailed it down, let’s all give it a go!

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