Arroz Tapado - Cultivation of Ancient Plants

Cultivation of Ancient Plants

During the colonial period, and continuing up until the time of the Second World War, Peruvian cuisine focused on Spanish models and virtually ignored anything that could be regarded as native or Indian. Traditional food plants, which the indigenous people continued to eat, were regarded as "peasant food" to be avoided. These colonial attitudes took a long time to fade. Since the 1970s, there has been an effort to bring these native food plants out of obscurity.

Some plants cultivated by ancient societies of Peru have been rediscovered by modern Peruvians, and are carefully studied by scientists. Due to the characteristics of its land and climate and the nutritional quality of its products, some Peruvian plants may play a vital role in future nutrition. Examples include quinoa (an excellent source of essential amino acids) and kañiwa, which look and cook like cereals but are pseudocereals. Nutritionists are also studying root vegetables, such as maca and, cereals like kiwicha.

For many of Peru's inhabitants, these food stocks allow for adequate nutrition, even though living standards are poor. Abandoning many of these staples during the Spanish domination and republican eras lowered nutritional levels. Since 1985, NASA has uses some of these foods—quinoa, kiwicha and maca—for astronaut meals.

Peruvian cuisine is often made spicy with ají pepper, a basic ingredient. Peruvian chili peppers are not spicy but serve to give taste and color to dishes. Rice often accompanies dishes in Peruvian cuisine, and the regional sources of foods and traditions give rise to countless varieties of preparation and dishes.

The following dishes are generally popular with Peruvians. Some of these originated in other parts of Peru, but most are well known and can be found in Lima.

Read more about this topic:  Arroz Tapado

Famous quotes containing the words cultivation of, cultivation, ancient and/or plants:

    The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?
    J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)

    Let these memorials of built stone music’s
    enduring instrument, of many centuries of
    patient cultivation of the earth, of English
    verse ...
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    ... feminism is a political term and it must be recognized as such: it is political in women’s terms. What are these terms? Essentially it means making connections: between personal power and economic power, between domestic oppression and labor exploitation, between plants and chemicals, feelings and theories; it means making connections between our inside worlds and the outside world.
    Anica Vesel Mander, U.S. author and feminist, and Anne Kent Rush (b. 1945)