Peruvian cuisine's extraordinary diversity is inseparable from its geography: three completely distinct ecological zones occupying one country. The Pacific coast (costa) produces the world's most productive cold-water upwelling, yielding extraordinary seafood abundance. The Andes (sierra) at 3,000–4,000m above sea level produces potatoes, quinoa, corn, and the cold-adapted protein sources (guinea pig, alpaca, llama). The Amazon basin (selva) contains the greatest biological diversity on earth, including ingredients unknown outside the region.
**Coastal cooking:** - Defined by the Humboldt Current — the cold Pacific upwelling that produces the world's most abundant anchovy population and drives one of the richest marine ecosystems. - Techniques: ceviche, tiradito, leche de tigre — all raw or barely-cooked fish preparations that respect the extraordinary freshness and flavour of Pacific seafood. **Andean cooking:** - Altitude defines the technique: water boils at 90°C at 3,000m — cooking times are longer than at sea level. - Ingredients: freeze-dried potato (chuño), freeze-dried meat (charki — the origin of "jerky"), quinoa, kiwicha (amaranth), corn (choclo). - The pachamanca: an earth oven preparation — heated rocks lined in a pit, food layered on top, covered with herbs and leaves, the whole sealed with earth and cooked for 2–3 hours. One of the oldest cooking techniques in the Americas. **Amazon/jungle cooking:** - Ingredients almost entirely unknown outside the region: chonta (palm heart), yuca (cassava), various jungle fruits, paiche (the world's largest freshwater fish). - Jungle ceviche uses the local citrus (camu camu, the most vitamin-C rich fruit on earth) rather than lime.
Peru