We´re Cooking

From what I understand, it´s sort of a tradition for visitors to cook a meal for the Valenzuela family, so Matthew and I agreed with gusto. Yes, with gusto.

This task proved to be more difficult than anticipated. Deciding what to make with a different selection of ingredients for 6 people was a challenge. The only thing I can make with confidence is the Sweet Potato dish I make every Thanksgiving. Matthew decided on a stir-fry with peanut sauce and chocolate chip cookies. Pisco Sours for dessert.

Then we had to find all of the ingredients. It helped having Enrique accompany us to a supermarket where we could scope things out and return later to buy many of the items at once. It also helped to know the Spanish words for things like "baking soda," "cinnamon," and "peanut butter." The most difficult ingredient to accquire was pecans, for the sweet potato topping. For future reference, they´re called "pecanas" and apparently aren´t all that common, so are 50 soles per kilo. Luckily, I needed only 5 soles worth.

When we were ready to cook, we came to the kitchen equipped with the recipes, ingredients, and my Peru travel book, which has a conversion chart in the front. Fortunately, the meausring cup we used actually had "taza" (cup) measurements! Unfortunately, the temperature conversion chart didn´t go higher than 70ºF, but we were happy when Gladys returned home from some errands and lit the gas oven for us. She laughed and told us she didn´t need temperatures because she had been cooking for a long time.

Though we had a few minor issues (i.e. realizing we bought unsweetened chocolate bars to chop for the chips in the cookies...tasted like wax, forgetting we wanted to make rice and buy bread), the dinner turned out fantastically, even though everyone was surprised we were cooking with peanut butter and without salt. Gladys was a huge help, offering to chop veggies for the stir-fry, anything we needed for the dinner we were trying to serve as a treat. The Pisco Sours were delicious. And guess what I had for breakfast? Yes, leftover sweet potatoes.