The rest of us hopped into our private van and headed back to Cusco. It sort of seemed like we were back and forth to Cusco an awful lot, it was like our "home base", and it was becoming quite familiar. It was nice to know where the market and the hole-in-the-wall shop was, and the pharmacies and the quick route to the Plaza de Armas, and even where the banks and bank machines were. It was almost like coming home!
The ride from Ollyantatambo to Cusco is quite pretty, lots of farmland and snowcapped mountains in the background.
Before long we were back at the outskirts of the city. It looks quite run down in places, and while there are a llot of very poor areas, some of the houses are deceptively poor looking on purpose. See the unfinished upper story, and all the rebar sticking out? Well, a finished house pays very high taxes, but if it's unfinished and "being worked on", the taxes are so low that they're almost non existent. Seems odd that the government doesn't put a time limit on the length of time that it takes a person to build a house. The end result is a city full of unfinished buildings with rebar at every corner looking like antennae of some giant beetle.
And today is culinary class day! I'm pretty excited about it, it's not the type of thing I've ever had the opportunity to do before....especially in a far away South American city! However, first of all we had to settle back into our hotel and then back to the silver market....some of that silver was calling some of my fellow travellers.
Yet another room in the Prisma.
The silver market offered free water (bottled) and various types of pop, including the beloved Inca Kola. It is by far the favorite drink of the Peruvians...it's everywhere, like Coke is in
North America. It's a vivid yellow, even brighter than this picture makes it look. And sweet. I was warned that even I, with my sweet tooth wouldn't like it. So.....seeing as how it was free....I figured I'd try it. I was told that it would be like a cross between bubblegum and cream soda, both of which I hate, but you know? It actually wasn't that bad, more like a sweetish Dr. Pepper, it almost had a "bite" to it. I wouldn't order one in a restaurant, but for free....acceptable.
But now was the time to meet up with our chef! Yippee! (As we walked to the Plaza, which was our meet up spot, this is where one of our fellows got hit in the head with the flying rock from the police car)
We walked to the market, not the same as the last one:
But it still had just as many odd things:
And I'm not sure what was inside this little booth, but I think it must have been something fun!
This is called a cherimoya, or a custard apple. I've seen these on cooking shows, and I've been dying to try one. It is very aptly named as it has a very custardy texture, you scoop it out with a spoon, and has a very unique and sweet taste, almost like a cross between bananas, mangos and maybe some pineapple...it was really refreshing, almost like a thick, thick milkshake
Then there was a lucuma...oh, yummy, looks like a squash, but tastes like a caramel. It's used in a lot of cakes and ice creams as a sweetener.
And a maracuya, a type of passion fruit. I've had passion fruit flavored things before, but I've never eaten the fruit, it looked like something alien to me, and I wasn't really fond of the texture....kind of an icky gelatinous feel. Like I imagine innards to feel like. Alien innards. With little crunchy bones.We did have fresh passion fruit juice though, in the jungle, and it was fantastic. The fruit was just visually a turn off right off the bat, and then the texture made it doubly so.
And star fruit, which I have had before, but they tasted nothing like these.
And of course the usual run-of-the-mill fruits, but everything just tasted so much better than at home, even though I imagine that some of these fruits were picked a few days ago, I'm not rose-coloured-glasses-wearing enough to think that every item in the markets was picked fresh, glistening with dew drops, every morning, but I do know that everything was picked ripe and was grown with no help from Monsato.
This was Chef Erick, teaching us about these amazing fruits, although he looks annoyed at whatever he is holding.
I'm honestly not sure what these are, at first I thought maybe spices, like paprika and cumin and saffron, but then I thought maybe they are dyes, for colouring wool and yarn?
And some kind of weird something.
These are the dried/dehydrated potatoes, along with spices that go well with them for soup and "rehydration".
Whooo-hooooo....even boxed wine in the grocery area. This little dry goods store was so small that I was in the doorway to take this picture. There was no room for two people,but it had so much stuff, from wine to diapers to cookies and candy to canned goods and all sorts of toiletries.
And on your way out you could pick up some fresh flowers, I was surprised at how many men were buying bouquets of them, maybe because it was almost Mothers Day, but I prefer to think that they were just purchasing them because they wanted to....for the joy of flowers. But...it was probably because it was almost Mothers Day.
After our lesson in foods, we hopped back into the van and headed over to the restaurant.
We started out with learning about the various types of pisco and making pisco sours. I already knew I didn't care for them, but it was fun to make them in an real bar, but truth be told, I was more interested in the appies that were provided:
Thick and crispy potato slices with a garlic pesto type of dip, and a deceptive looking pepper dip...it was hot! Too hot for me, at any rate.
After everyone had had a few tastes of different types of pisco....we were supposed to be able to tell the difference between them, but they all tasted like rot-gut tequila to me...there is no "smooth" in anything that's 80 proof as far as I'm concerned, anyhow, after all the mixing and tasting, we were sent to our table to work with sharp knives...struck me as backwards, but what do I know?
Although, to be serious, it's not like there was "drinking" going on, just small sips of the various piscos. I had one mini sip, and it was as horrid as I remembered...I mixed and shook, but did not partake. Then...time to cook!
So we started with lovely, clean dishes:
Mine very quickly looked like this:
We were given a boiled potato, and when they say a "yellow" potato in Peru, they mean yellow. We were told to mash it, just using a fork, which is not as easy as you might think. We were also to add spices and a sauce that had been already made, in order to have the texture and flavour of the one the chef had already made and let us taste.
It was an oddly messy job, and bits of my potato were everywhere, I had to discreetly sweep them onto the floor, I'm sure the place under my chair was a complete mess.
In the long run, what we were making was "causa", pronounced "cow-za". It's a traditional dish, supposedly it got its name from the Quechua word "kausay" which means "sustenance of life". May or may not be true, but it's a nice story.
It's basically a terrine, using the creamy, spicy potato as a base, then you layer boiled chicken, hard boiled eggs diced up, slices of avocado, black olives and repeat. It's all tucked neatly into one of those round tin things, and then popped out and decorated. It took us about 45 minutes to make ours, the chef makes his in about 4 minutes.
Then we ate them! It was a really intriguing mix of flavours, I'd make a variation of this at home in an instant (well, in 45 minutes worth of instants)
The chef then gave us a look at his kitchen as he whipped up an alpaca lomo saltado that took a whole 4 minutes from beginning to end and let us eat that too....luckily we got to sit at a whole new table so that no one could see all the potato crumbs, shreds of chicken and bits of hard boiled egg that had flown off of my plate.
We took a look at the view from his rooftop terrace. It was a gorgeous spot, and the view of the tops of the cathedral and the lights of Cusco twinkling on the hillside was a perfect way to end the day. Full belly and a full soul. I love Peru!
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