Arriving in Peru

We arrived on Thursday morning, December 3rd. It took us an hour to get out of customs due to the number of arriving  flights. No problems otherwise.

We rested for a couple of days and today we went to "La Ciudad Comercial Minka" in Callao. It is the largest retail center in Peru - 33 acres of small and large market stalls. The photos that follow will make you want to get on a plane and see it for yourself.

The first is a picture of one of twenty or more fish stalls.

Fresh tuna (bonito) at less than $2/kilo, trout and smelts, whatever fish

appeal to your tastes.

Each stall specializes in something. This woman is removing the shells from small shrimp. All they sell are varieties and sizes of shrimp

We bought fish to make ceviche with. All that really matters with ceviche is fresh fish.

Now we move onto the fruit ection. Some stalls sell a variety of fruit and the second stall in this pictures sells only bananas. We needed a kilo of fresh limes but we didn't buy them here.

This is the second for three isles of fresh fruit

In the third isle we found a stall that specialized in limes.

Five or six stalls selling only limes.

Of course, you can't have ceviche without onions

We didn't buy potatoes but there are lots of stalls for that too.

It is amazing to see so many different kinds of potato in one place.

These yellow "potatoes" are really oyuca. Oyuca is not starchy but can be eaten and served like potatoes. Some call gthem "diet potatoes".

The meat is not so cheap. We will do a turkey and pork shoulder for Christmas. The pork shoulder costs about $18 today but will cost a lot more closer to Christmas.  Turkey is a bit more expensive.

Chicken anyone?

The final result; a few hours later

Let's go over the ceviche dish, one ingredient at a time.

From the top - sweet potato, papa amarilla (yukon gold) and yucca. The yucca in Peru is more yellow in colour than white, which is what we can buy in the US.  Next, rotating clockwise, are plantain chips. There was a stall in the market that sold only chips and cancha (toasted corn kernels), freshly deep fried on the spot. I didn't take their picture but things are better when they are only minutes from the cooking process.

After the plantain chips comes the cancha - toasted corn (well-salted). Then we have some freshly boiled corn kernels. In Peru these kernels are generally much bigger than a corn kernel at home.

In the middle is the ceviche - fresh fish salad containing fish, onion, celery, cillantro, a but of garlic, lots of salt and more. You will see some red flecks in the ceviche. This is a local chilli - aji Limo. Very picante. Too hot to eat but it sits there in the lime juice that marinates the fish. When you finish eating the fish you drink the remaining lime juice. This is called tiger's milk (leche de tigre) and the name is a propos. The chilli makes it particularly picante.

It was a delicious meal. Finally the chef. Here are Alberto and Olga digging in. Alberto made the ceviche while Olga made her hair look young again.