Sunday morning, we got up early and enjoyed breakfast at our B&B.
After breakfast, we left to meet up for a market tour and fruit tasting, then we had a cooking class!
We read lots of Trip Advisor reviews and decided to go with SkyKitchen. We did the Peruvian Classics meal, market tour and food tasting. The Market Tour was awesome, I'm definitely glad we added it on! We learned about so many Peruvian foods!
The vendor SkyKitchen gets some of its products from.
Some unique Peruvian fruits.
The vendor SkyKitchen gets its fish from. Do you spy the shark under the fish?
A few of the varieties of potatoes available in Peru - there are thousands!
Some Peruvian peppers
Our group
Our guys!
Photobomb!!!
After the market tour, we took a cab to SkyKitchen and tasted SO many fruits (about 40)! Christian told us about each fruit, so there was a lot of info. Of course, we can't get most of them in the US, but it was still a great time!
SO many fruits!
Once we had tasted all the fruits and decided on our favorites, Christian explained all the foods we would be making that day and we got started. Here are the foods we made -
Causa
This is a fancy way of making mashed potatoes. They have a pepper paste in them that gives them a light yellow/orange color and SO much flavor! The pepper, Aji Amarillo is in a TON of Peruvian foods! We couldn't bring the pepper itself back, so we brought plenty of the paste! We layered the potatoes with chicken and avocados and topped it with mayonnaise (think a chicken salad and avocado sandwich with mashed potatoes instead of bread). YUM! We tried a few different versions of this dish at other points during our trip and I think this was a good representation of what it should taste like. Here is our first course.
Ceviche
Our first taste of Coca tea with breakfast...we became VERY familiar with this stuff in Cusco!
We read lots of Trip Advisor reviews and decided to go with SkyKitchen. We did the Peruvian Classics meal, market tour and food tasting. The Market Tour was awesome, I'm definitely glad we added it on! We learned about so many Peruvian foods!
After the market tour, we took a cab to SkyKitchen and tasted SO many fruits (about 40)! Christian told us about each fruit, so there was a lot of info. Of course, we can't get most of them in the US, but it was still a great time!
Once we had tasted all the fruits and decided on our favorites, Christian explained all the foods we would be making that day and we got started. Here are the foods we made -
Causa
This is a fancy way of making mashed potatoes. They have a pepper paste in them that gives them a light yellow/orange color and SO much flavor! The pepper, Aji Amarillo is in a TON of Peruvian foods! We couldn't bring the pepper itself back, so we brought plenty of the paste! We layered the potatoes with chicken and avocados and topped it with mayonnaise (think a chicken salad and avocado sandwich with mashed potatoes instead of bread). YUM! We tried a few different versions of this dish at other points during our trip and I think this was a good representation of what it should taste like. Here is our first course.
I LOVE ceviche! I've had it in other places - Mexico, Spain, even the US. None of those places can even touch the Ceviche we had in Peru (although Mexico comes close). Makes sense since Peru is where ceviche was born.
Anyhow, ceviche is made with fresh fish that is "cured" or cooked in citrus juices. The fish doesn't actually cook - good ceviche should not sit in the citrus juices too long, or the fish will become too chewy (this is what had happened with the ceviche I've had in the US). We made our ceviche with with Mahi Mahi (which just happens to be my favorite fish!) that had been purchased at the market we visited. Christian showed us how to tell if a whole fish is fresh while we were on the tour too, so hopefully I'll get to use that new skill sometime! We used just lime juice because we learned in our class that lemons don't exist in Peru. We added Aji Amarillo (of course), red onions, cilantro, and a little bit of a hotter pepper. I tried ceviche 3 other times while we were in Peru and this was one of the best. Only one other ceviche came close and it was from a pricey (on Peruvian standards) restaurant and a small portion (that one was made with Red Snapper).
My ceviche - It was served with potatoes (like just about any Peruvian dish), Sweet Potatoes and giant Peruvian corn (sometimes, it's served toasted and it is delicious!)
Lomo Saltado
Anyhow, ceviche is made with fresh fish that is "cured" or cooked in citrus juices. The fish doesn't actually cook - good ceviche should not sit in the citrus juices too long, or the fish will become too chewy (this is what had happened with the ceviche I've had in the US). We made our ceviche with with Mahi Mahi (which just happens to be my favorite fish!) that had been purchased at the market we visited. Christian showed us how to tell if a whole fish is fresh while we were on the tour too, so hopefully I'll get to use that new skill sometime! We used just lime juice because we learned in our class that lemons don't exist in Peru. We added Aji Amarillo (of course), red onions, cilantro, and a little bit of a hotter pepper. I tried ceviche 3 other times while we were in Peru and this was one of the best. Only one other ceviche came close and it was from a pricey (on Peruvian standards) restaurant and a small portion (that one was made with Red Snapper).
My ceviche - It was served with potatoes (like just about any Peruvian dish), Sweet Potatoes and giant Peruvian corn (sometimes, it's served toasted and it is delicious!)
Lomo Saltado
We learned that there is a HUGE Chinese influence on Peruvian food. Lomo Saltado is a beef stir fry using beef loin. Since cattle is not a huge thing in Peru, it is difficult to find tender meats from younger cattle, so tenderloin was purchased for our class. When I make this at home, I'll just by regular beef loin. This was so easy to make and very delicious!
Picarones
Next was dessert. I LOVE dessert, so I was quite excited about these. They are similar to donuts and they are very popular in Peru. The batter is made with Sweet potatoes, squash (a type we can't get in the US, but we can substitute Acorn Squash), flour and yeast. We made the batter early in the class and let it rise as we made and ate the other dishes. The batter is scooped and formed into donut shapes with your hands, then fried. There is a topping that is made with dissolved raw sugar (that ends up tasting similar to molasses) and drizzled on the picarones. They are sweet, but most of the sweetness actually comes from the topping. The picarones themselves are not very sweet, just a little. So, now I've found a dessert that Josh and I both like!!!
All of these dishes were absolutely amazing. The class was worth every penny and we had such a great time! After we ate everything, we drank an espresso and took some pictures on the rooftop terrace.
We had tickets to a the biggest food festival in South America, but we decided not to go. We took a walk around Miraflores instead...
First we went to Kennedy Park...
A group of students stopped us to interview us about tourism and our experience in Peru so far.
Now for the main reason we wanted to check out Kennedy Park...
We kept walking and made our way to the coast.
We ended up having Chaufa (Chinese with a Peruvian influence) for dinner on Sunday night. Josh and I shared Chicken Wonton soup and Fried rice. It was SO much food.
Yes, that is Chicken Wonton soup with chicken thighs floating in it. Delish!
We made a couple other stops on the way back to our room, but nothing too exciting. We finally had the opportunity to sleep in for a bit on Monday morning, so we were all quite excited to take advantage of that before making our way to Cusco!
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