The Misti Mountain Delights, Arequipa - By: Incasway

The Misti Mountain Delights, Arequipa

The Misti mountain, also known as Guagua-Putina located in southern Peru near the city of Arequipa. With its seasonally snow-capped, symmetrical cone, El Misti stands at 5,822 metres (19,101 ft) above sea level and lies between the mountain Chachani (6,075 m/19,931 ft) and the volcano Pichu-Pichu (5,669 m/18,599 ft). Its last eruption was in 1985.

El Misti is known as a tourist mountain because many travelers to Arequipa see this spectacular mountain and decide to give it a try. Five to ten people a week climb up its dusty slopes. In general one needs two days to make it to the top, for that reason a tent, etc. are necessary. To make it in one day one should be perfectly acclimated and in high physical condition.

With their capital situated at more than 8,800 feet above sea level, the Arequipeños make as good culinary use of the highland alpaca and sheep as of the animals of the valley floors, fowls and wildfowl, guinea pigs, cattle and pigs. And fish, including trout and the king of Arequipeño cooking - His Majesty the Fresh Water Shrimp. Of course it hardly needs saying that there is an honored place for the fish and shellfish of the prolific South Pacific Ocean.

Arequipeño food is mestizo cooking at its best. From the earliest days of the Spanish occupation, the ancestral ingredients were combined with those brought from Castille to produce the dishes that make mouths water today.

Arequipa, capital of the department is a cosmopolitan place and, as such, no good food is out of place there. Traditionally, though, the best food is to be found in the Picanterías, the typical local restaurants that are open only during the daytime.

A picanteria can be a modest place: earth floor, smokey walls and guinea pigs running among the tables, as they were in the beginning, or rather more pretentious ("El Sol de Mayo" and "La Cantarilla" for example). Picanterías of either type, though, are likely to be open-air places, with small roofed areas giving onto a simple patio or, in the best establishments, a flower garden.

There are a hundred or more traditional Arequipeño dishes, but the best loved are adobo de cerdo (pork, accompanied by aniseed liquor), chupes (thick broth of which shrimp is the finest), guinea pig (fried, breadcrumbed or with peanut sauce), piquant dishes (mainly clams and shrimp), mutton stew and chops, stuffed red hot pepper, cauchi (potato and melted cheese) and ocopa (potatoes in a sauce of peanuts, nuts and black mint).

Whatever apart from the standard dishes all Picanterías, whether simple or opulent, offer a ritual dish, which is always cheap and almost always made to suit local tastes. These dishes and the days of the week on which they are served have not changed since time immemorial: Monday chaque, Tuesday chairo, Wednesday chochoca, Thursday chuño, Friday chupe, Saturday timpusca and a succulent puchero corona on Sundays. Chicha de jora -that Peruvian maize beer - and fruit juices are the obligatory drinks at any such Arequipeño feast.

The River Shrimp
If God hadn't created the river shrimp the Arequipeños would have had to invent it. If you ask me, this marvelous crustacean from the rivers Majes and Camana is the triumph of Arequipeño cooking.

Whenever Peruvians, whether gastronomes or not, ask themselves what is their country's finest dish, the inevitable response is shrimp broth (closely followed, it's true, by goat and duck with rice - specialties of Peru's north coast). Shrimp broth also includes potatoes, milk and eggs, but nothing can obscure the shrimps themselves glowing red and coral-colored: the very god of river fauna. In Arequipa the river shrimp is usually as big as a medium-sized lobster; the white meat in the claws has the finest taste known to man, although the dark meat of the tail is a mystery even for the divine palate.

Apart from broth, shrimps are prepared in omelets or grilled or stewed, alone or with something else, or simply in Ceviche untouched by heat and bathed in lemon juice.

This shrimp should not be confused with the sea shrimp. The fresh water shrimp is extinct in many parts of the world. Yet it is incomparable. In French, for example, both types have a different name although the fresh water shrimp has disappeared from French rivers. The other day I was eating shrimps with a French friend and he said "for me this is like eating unicorn. The word "unicorn" exists in the dictionary but the unicorn doesn't exist in real life".

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Arequipa -- Peru -- Peruvian Vacations

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