Day 5: How to Make the Perfect Pisco Sour (and other discoveries)

Today's itinerary: Cooking class in Cusco

A change of pace for today – no mass tour groups but instead a private cooking class!  We didn’t know that much about what to expect when we booked, only that we were to be picked up around 11am and that the 3hrs or so would include a trip to the local market followed by some cooking and lunch!  It was also a perfect easy start to the day too, especially given that tomorrow the hiking starts in earnest, so we wanted to take it easy and rest up today.

I think we've got the snacks for our hike covered

I got up around 7am to do a spot of light blogging and catch up on our Sacred Valley trip from yesterday and Lisa joined me around 8am for breakfast.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous, sunny and warm and, after breakfast, we sat outside in the beautiful courtyard of the hotel waiting for our guide/chef to turn up.  Last time we were on vacation in Nicaragua we also took a cooking class and ended up in the home of this tiny old Nicaraguan woman who spoke very little English, but who walked us through the steps for making a classic local celebratory dish.  It felt very intimate, as we were in her kitchen, surrounded by her kids and cats and random passers-by but it was certainly an experience!

If you look very closely at this picture, you will
eventually spot the dried llama fetus.

So Lisa and I were just sitting outside, speculating on what this cooking experience would be like.  I’d literally just made the hopeful comment “well, maybe our chef will turn up and be a sexy guy?” to which Lisa replied “nah, I’m sure it’ll be a little old lady like in Nicaragua”, when our chef turned up.   And our collective hearts skipped a beat.  Well, hello Diego!  Obviously all those visits to the sun temples and offerings of credit cards to the Alpaca gods did the trick as our host for the next 3 hrs was a genuine hottie!  (thank you sun gods!)  All smiley, crinkly, warm and friendly, he was very charismatic and charming, so we were in for a fun few hours!

Believe it or not, the bark in the bag is basically
LSD in root form.  Take it at your peril.

First up was a visit to the local market.  As today was the festival of Corpus Christi (the biggest festival in the Cusco catholic’s calendar), everywhere was absolutely jammed packed with people and the streets and the markets were buzzing with people.  Diego (sigh) took us round the market, stopping at various stalls to point out local produce and tell us a bit about how they were grown or harvested.  I liked the particular strain of Peruvian potato that looked a bit like a cerebral cortex (apparently there are 2,000 strains of potato here!).  We saw a basket full of innocuous looking roots and tubers that, if consumed, contained enough hallucinogens to blow your mind to the moon and back.  Incredible you can just buy that stuff, just like that.  

Tuber-tastic

We also saw lots of deep fried things including guinea pigs (which I still haven’t tried yet) as well as a stall that sold packages of offerings to the gods, one of which was a mummified alpaca foetus!  We didn’t actually buy anything at the market (presumably they’d already bought everything and it was waiting at the cooking school for us) but it was brilliant to walk around and see all the authentic food and unidentifiable produce.

Brain potatoes!

For whatever ails you, they'll fix you a tea to cure you

Lake seaweed.  Not sure what the orange stuff is.

Queso fresco!  The orange piles next to it are fish eggs.  Yum.

Alpaca jerky.  Somehow I managed to resist.

So look and see where this lady's left hand is (her left)
and tell me what you think that is....  Clue: it used to
be small, cute and furry...

Just in case you needed a close-up.
You're welcome.

The bustling market scene.

Now this is an agenda I can get behind... our menu for the class

After about half an hour, we left the market and our private taxi cab slogged his way back to come and pick us up to drive us over to the cooking school.  It was in a fairly residential, non-touristy part of town and was situated right on the rooftop of an eight storey building, so it had some rather lovely views of the surrounding countryside, including the Christ statue at Sucsaywauman, where we’d visited on Tuesday.  The cooking school was called the Rooftop Kitchen and it was absolutely gorgeous!  It looked brand new and the set-up was really nice, with rows of burners down the middle of the workstations and everything was impeccably clean.  Again, rather a different experience from the one in Nicaragua!

The pristine cooking school

Lisa rocking her chef's whites.

We washed our hands, were handed our chefs jackets and aprons and got straight to business with the first recipe of the day – the Pisco Sour!!  (again, huzzah to the sun gods!).  Now, I don’t yet have the recipes for any of the dishes we made as they are emailing them to us, so I can’t give you the precise instructions now, but I’ll update this post at a later date with the full instructions in case you want to try it yourself.  Its pretty easy – the basic thing to remember about a Pisco Sour is to shake, shake, shake for at least 45 seconds as its this that turns the raw egg white that you add (which I didn’t realize was in it!) into the white frothy foam on the top.  As Pisco Sour Number 3 for this trip, I think it was the best one yet!

After retiring for a short break to a little outdoor terrace to sip our sours while they prepped the next course, we were called back into the kitchen by the lovely Diego to prepare a fusion version of a ceviche – made with trout and the classic citrus lime, but also with added fennel and some black quinoa.  Again, it was very easy to make, slicing the trout into very thin slivers before pouring over the tangy citrus dressing (into which you’d stirred a teaspoon of quinoa) that instantly cures and cooks the fish.  And eh voila!  It was done and ready to eat!!   It was deliciously tasty and would make a great starter for a dinner party back home (don’t worry, Mumsie and Loopy – I won’t make you eat it!), especially if you make them in little individual portion tasting spoons. 

So then we came on to the main dish – this one another hybrid, combining risotto techniques and black quinoa into a dish that was called Quinoa Quinotto.  It was DELICIOUS!  As you can tell from the pictures, it got a little tense towards the end as the potential for f*ck-uppery increased with lots of ingredients needing to be added one after the other, all while making sure to stir everything well so it didn’t burn.  The flame on the burner was set quite high as if to test our culinary mettle (Lisa actually turned hers down at one stage – only for Diego’s assistant (I think he was the owner of the cooking facility) to turn it back up again!  But with some frantic stirring and much concentration, the end product was worth it – Mumsie, this is definitely one I’ll be making for you when you come to visit!

And, with that, sadly our cooking class – and time with the heavenly Diego – was at an end.  

We were packaged up into a taxi and headed back over to the main Plaza where the celebratory fiesta was reaching Times Square at New Year crowd proportions, so we poked our heads above the crowd for a quick look-see (wonderfully easy for me) then decided we both needed a pee so went off to find a coffee shop to sit and recombobulate.  Those Pisco Sours had done both Lisa and I in, so we countered the effect with the best antidote known to man for any ailment – hot chocolate and cake. 

Feeling slightly better, but still in dire need of a nap, we started to wend our way back to the hotel – this time only managing to get diverted by one Alpaca shop where I may or may not have made another couple of Peruvian economy affirming purchases.  Fortunately Lisa joined me too, so at least I had a partner in retail crime this time.

Then, all we had left to do for the day was sleep off the Pisco Sour and cake, and wake up in time to go to our briefing at 7pm for the start of our hike proper.  The briefing was pretty short and very simple.  Key takeaways that I heard – we will hike very slowly.  Stay hydrated.  OK – got it.  Bring it on!

Mis en place

Swoon.  A sexy man who can cook.  Marvelous.

About to embark on the Pisco sours

Lisa looks skeptical - "how much egg white?"

Tom Cruise in Cocktail, eat yer heart out!  Shaking the hell out
of our Pisco Sours!

The finished product, decorated with a couple drops
of Angostora bitters.  Looks pretty damn good, if
I say so myself.  Tasted even better.

Selfie cocktails al fresco

Not sure what was going on here...

Slicing the trout for our ceviche.  Watch the fingers...

The dish is coming together... adding the quinoa and dressing

Ta-da!!

Nom nom nom

The Quinoa Quinotto gets serious

The finished product - tasted far better than it looks in this picture!

Spot the placement.  Not accidental... 

The fiesta of Corpus Christie in the main square.