Perú - Una Aventura Culinaria
Gaston Acurio is the preeminent chef in Peru at this moment. With a string of successful restraurants in his hometown of Lima to his cable cooking show, he is a bona fide celebrity. His seal of approval means a heck of a lot in a country that prides itself on it's culinary acumen.So it is undstandable that there is a great deal of interest in his cookbooks that cover his area of expertise. Although popular here in Peru, the are, regretably, not available in English or for order online.
The standard of all his books is Perú - Una Aventura Culinaria For folks interested in the nitty gritty of Peruvian food and, particularly, Acurio's take on it, sadly, this is not the book for that (the two series, Las Cocinas del Peru por Gaston Acurio and La Cocina de Gaston Acurio, meet this need much better).
It has dozens of interesting recipes but the take on them seems to be skewed to accomidate the lavish photographs of Renzo Uccelli and Marco Beathyate.
These are dishes for a restaurant not for a common kitchen, making this more of a book for the coffee table than for beside the stove. That said, the detailed prefaces to the chapeters and the appendixes in the back of the volume are a treasure trove of information.
Most notable is the stockpile of base recipes that are an invaluable guides to cooking authentic Peruvian dishes. Less formal recipes these are more like the kind of sketches your mom would give you about how she cooks some family standard. They give a critical perspective that can help a cook understand the key of a more normal type of recipe.
more: Cookbooks | Peruvian Cuisine
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