peru, mucho gusto

mountains valley river sky and shrine outside of cuzco, peru

paid work recently swept me far far afield from the radical muffin kitchen: to the mountains of Peru, green and vital, carved with art in places, terraced over generations.

birthplace of more than 4,000 varieties of potatoes. A biodiversity & spectrum of taste endangered in part by fast food empires’ demand for fry fodder Idaho potatoes.

and protected by locals. Earlier this year, Quechua farmers sent seeds of 1,500 potato varieties to a ‘seed vault’, an organization working with indigenous communities to gather both seeds and knowledge on the humble and critical potato.

corn & fava beans for snacking and garnishing soup at the table

no fries for me! instead i ate all kinds of potatoes creamed into soups or swimming with their ancient, perfect sisters—corn, beans, quinoa—in verdant herbed broths.

pumpkin soup

0r pumpkin sopa of velvety orange. A bowl of profound sustenance when you’ve come through the heavy old old doors from the evening air settling cold on the square. the lights of homes spreading outward and upward towards the stars. and the giant light up jesus.

illuminated jesus above cuzco

in addition to the pageantry and politics of religion, the local peoples live with herbal and nutritional wisdom like relief from the altitude affects with mate de coca, coca leaf tea. Cooking magics like cebiche (citrus cooked seafood), spit fermented drinks and head-spinning hallucinogenics. Admittedly, I was no wilder than a few pisco sours, a muscat grape liquor served topped with shining frothed egg whites and freckles of cinnamon. That nudge of spicy scent opens the way for a clean little bite that delivers more booze than anticipated. Or maybe the altitude enabled a serious whallop from a small glass (not enough coca tea!).

on the last evening, after the longest trek, I had that same sense of a meal perfectly tuned to place and my own fatigue when I sat down to a cold bottle of the local beer, Cusqueña and a heaping plate of spicy Indian food. At Maikhana Indian Coffee House on Av El Sol, off the main plaza in Cuzco, 15 soles (about $5.50) will buy all access to a buffet of veggie, chicken and lamb dishes with rice and mineral water. Plus a sideboard of delightful condiments like a ginger-coconut slurry, coriander chutney and plain crescents of cucumber. Not to mention Wi-fi and an international phone call. Perhaps that call is not standard, but  Thrifty Wanderlust will let us know in a post about her adventures in Cuzco soon!!! Breads and beer are cheap add-ons. Also looked like they had plenty of wine, in a glass doored case dotted all over with colorful stickers at the heights of little kids’ fingers.

cuy with potatoes and deep fried pepper stuffed with meat & olives

finally, no, I did not try cuy.
but the garblogger at Everyday Trash did!!! Folks serve up guinea pig in restaurants and keep them at home in fuzzy herds for special suppers. This one came out whole with a tomato tiara on her long toothed head. Word is it tasted mostly of fried. The stuffed pepper side, however, was reportedly most excellent.

Peru, mucho gusto! [.com]

ridiculous pumpkin mini muffins

pumpkin chocolate chip muffin with eggnog maple glaze

i don’t usually go in for the sugary-sweet, myriad flavored or, as Nigella would say, twee.  The pumpkin quick bread batter, however, made far more than anticipated so the overflow went into a mini-muffin tin.  Thank providence there has arrived a second mini-muffin tin to the radical muffin kitchen, because, have mercy, there was still more of that batter. More-mini muffins, even itty-bittier than the first.

frankly, i over-baked the teeny things, so to make amends I glazed them with what happened to be handy: maple cream and eggnog.

evoking a text from angela of acupuncture (my downstairs neighbor upon whom I foist so many baked goods her three year old thoroughly associates me with cookies): that was amazing…would love the recipe for those pumpkin maple muffins. Ridiculous!!

So here is the recipe:

cream together a softened stick of butter with a cup of sugar; to achieve ridiculousness, try turbinado sugar that’s been stored with a split vanilla bean. Blend in roasted pumpkin, about two cups. I busted out the electric hand mixer for this because my pumpkin was stringy like spaghetti squash and needed to be really whipped into the creamed fat and sugar.

care bear gummy in a star cookie

our sweet pumpkins arrived to squat on the steps under the looming giant glittered fake flowers, wired to the stair rails and strung with cobwebs, leading up to our apartment door for Halloween. They only offered up their autumnal aesthetics for a few days, because I promised the shop-keep I would cook these particular pie-pumpkins, as he chastised me these were “not for carving.”

to roast a small pumpkin, slice it in half and scrape out the seeds and fibrous pulp with a spoon. Leaving a few seeds to cook with the pumpkin to join it later in the bread keeps it real. Sit the halves, hollows up, on a parchment paper lined baking tray, and pour in a few slugs of good olive oil, turning the squash to coat the orange flesh. Add sea salt and a grinding of pepper. We also added saffron threads. Roast in a hot oven, 375°, for half an hour (more or less, depending on size and stove) until a fork easily pierces through its flesh. Flip the halves over about three quarters of the way through cooking. When thoroughly roasted, let them cool then scrape the flesh right out of the shell into, well, whatever you’re going to use it for. We had three pumpkins, and only one went into this bread and muffin extravaganza.

returning to the batter: scrape half a vanilla bean into the pumpkin etc. Beat in three eggs. Stir in three cups of flour total, adding about ½ cup of sweetened condensed milk in with the last cup, graham flour following two cups of all purpose. A dash of salt; ½ a teaspoon each baking powder and soda.

pour to fill a lined and buttered loaf pan a generous halfway. Add a cup of small chocolate chips, these were from Caluccio’s Italian grocery, to the remaining batter. Then fill (so it turns out) two mini-muffin tins. I lined them with papers but ended up peeling the papers off before glazing so might as well grease the pan and do without the papers to begin with.

fit it all strategically into a 350° oven and bake, pulling the muffins out at about 9-12 minutes then the loaf half an hour after that. Free from their respective pans to a rack to cool before glazing.

the glaze: cream two cups powdered sugar with one tablespoon of butter and two of maple cream. Admittedly, maple cream is an odd thing to have on hand outside of Vermont; all butter will do. Work in about ½ a cup of maple syrup and enough eggnog to make a glaze the consistency of good melted chocolate. Dip those wee muffins head first, let them dry, and dunk again. Let drip dry right side up on a rack.

the loaf doesn’t really want a glaze, being dense and damp as it is, but mini-muffins dry out quicker and appreciate a sugar shellac. Give them away lest you eat them all and go into sugar shock.