Heavenly and earthly foods
Versión en Castellano

In her beautiful and carefully-edited book El Perú y sus Manjares (Peru and its foods), Josie Sisón presents the reader a collection of Peruvian dessert recipes dug out during endless years of patient investigation in the cook books of aristocratic families, traditional monastic convents and expert sweet makers.

With a beginning inspired by Heaven, the cook book starts with the recipes inherited by convents whose dessert making reputation goes back to Spanish colonial times. The book begins with the recipes from the convent of La Encarnación whose doors, or so tradition goes, opened to the golden carriages of Lima's viceroys who tasted there the convent's almond pastes carved to supreme art shapes. Santa Catalina was another convent that boasted a supreme almonds dessert that combined egg yolks, ground almonds and sugar with typically Peruvian sweet potatoes, port wine and a dash of cinnamon powder.

The residents of Lima, so Josie Sisón tells us, have always had a great predilection for almonds, grown in Peru in older times and which are occasionally replaced by so-called Brazil or Andean nuts grown in the Amazonian department of Madre de Dios. From the same convent of Santa Catalina also came the well-known frijol colado or sweet, pureed beans that combine the mashed pulse with milk, sugar, sweet port wine, clove, lard and roasted sesame seeds. And for an extra little vigor, a small glass of brandy. The local preparation found a strong competitor in the Terranova bean dessert -made at the Santa Clara convent- which, most likely after the gastronomic inspiration of some mulatto slave imported from Terranova, combined black beans whipped to a puree in a typical bronze pot with molasses, lard, and a strong dose of sweet port wine.

More earthly preparations included in Josie Sison's cook book include suspiros de limeña (or "sighs of a Lima lady") prepared with sweet cream, well-beaten egg yolks and sugar, all topped with a port wine and sugar meringue. Peruvian fruits obviously hold a center stage position in local dessert-making. One such delight is the lucuma cream mold prepared with milk, sugar, gelatin and mashed lucuma cooked in a double-boiler. An equally delicious alternative is creamed chirimoya or custard apple, made with sections of custard apple, whipped cream, egg whites beaten to a stiff meringue, and gelatin.

A detailed list of the book's many desserts would have to include alfajores (pastries of Moorish influence), yemecillas or egg-yolk cakes, and guargüeros. A tradition of Lima's family reunions was always a table full of desserts and, at weddings and birthday parties, an elaborate cake presiding over the party.

By Mariano Valderrama