The pisco sour was one of the first drinks to be codified during the “Golden Age of Cocktails.” In fact, the recipe emerged as a result of a confluence of factors far from the South American spirit’s birthplace. 

California boasts a history of wine and brandy production dating back to the 17th century, as well as a deep connection to South and Central American territories once controlled by the Spanish Crown. Gold Rush era San Francisco was a hotbed for cocktail culture, by virtue of the glut of unattached men looking for ways to distract themselves from their arduous work in the mining industry. While the Conquistadors invested in California wine production, spirit distillation was much less widespread; for local high rollers who wished to imbibe, high-quality options were slim. 

Pisco—a grape-based distillate whose origins are a topic of debate between Peru and Chile—was suited perfectly to the late 19th century’s emerging “fancy drinks” trend. At turns aromatic and dry, the spirit pairs nicely with various fruits and acids, and was a natural choice for the era’s elevated serves. San Francisco’s Bank Exchange and Billiard Saloon popularized pisco in the 1880s by mixing it with pineapple, lime, and syrup for the enormously popular pisco punch, inspiring imitators throughout the city. Then in the 1920s, the South American liquor garnered its international fame when Victor Vaughn Morris, an American bar owner who’d immigrated to Lima, began serving a pisco-based riff on the whisky sour.  Made luxuriously silky via the addition of egg white (like the Ramos gin fizz popularized in New Orleans shortly before), and highly aromatic courtesy of Angostura bitters, a drink this good is virtually impossible to improve upon, which explains why the recipe hasn’t changed in over a century.

*Note: It is important to point out that Chilean pisco is generally more floral, while Peruvian versions can display more earthy and vegetal notes which I find more suitable for cocktailing. There are four broad styles of Peruvian Pisco: Puro, Aromatico, Acholado, and Mosto Verde. I prefer Acholado for its drier profile, while others may prefer the sweetness of Mosto Verde. The brands Barsol, Porton, and Macchu Pisco will all work nicely in this recipe.

The post Pisco Sour appeared first on Saveur.

This quick Mexican egg dish is made “a la Mexicana” with red tomatoes, white onions, and green jalapeños—ingredients that mirror the colors of the Mexican flag. Find more of our favorite Mexican recipes here.

Get seasonal recipes, methods, techniques, and features sent right to your inbox—sign up here to receive Saveur newsletters. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at @saveurmag.

WATCH: How to Dice a Hot Pepper

The post Huevos a la Mexicana appeared first on Saveur.

This chunky, creamy guacamole from Mexico-born chef Roberto Santibáñez is made in the traditional manner: by first grinding the flavoring agents to a paste using a molcajete, then gently mixing in chopped avocados. Serrano chiles give this avocado dip a light heat while the acidity from fresh limes keeps it bright and zesty. Mortar and pestles may be bulky, but the grinding action is essential to making dips and pastes with a richer texture.

Featured in “The Unlikely Origins of Tableside Guacamole,” by Emily Saladino.

Note: For a milder guacamole, seed the serrano chile.

The post Our Most Popular Guacamole Recipe Ever appeared first on Saveur.

Onions, mushrooms, sweet corn, and chiles in adobo add hearty, smoky flavors to these vegetarian tacos. Here are eight more ways we’re cooking with swiss chard.

37 Vegetarian Recipes That Are Anything But Boring

Don’t limit your options to just salad—there are lots of choices if you’re looking to avoid meat >

The post Swiss Chard and Chipotle Tacos appeared first on Saveur.

Spanish for “pregnant fish,” pescado embarazado is a mishearing of this dish’s actual name, pescado en vara asado, or grilled fish on a stick. It’s one of the most popular dishes to eat at the beach in Nayarit, Mexico. In this version adapted from chef Esther Sanchez, the marinade is made with achiote paste, citrus, tomato, and cumin. Reserve some of the flavorful sauce and serve it on the side as a zesty condiment.

Featured in: “This Fish on a Stick Might Be the Best Beach Snack in Mexico.”

The post Pescado Embarazado (Grilled Fish Skewers) appeared first on Saveur.

This spicy chile-and-garlic salsa comes from Brooklyn-based chef and musician Stephen Tanner, and does well atop nachos, burritos, and eggs. Use it sparingly!

What You Will Need

• 12″ Skillet
• Blender

The Best Salsas to Slather on Everything

Good on chips and pretty much anything >

Watch How to Make Salsa

The post Chile de Árbol Salsa appeared first on Saveur.

Agua de jamaica owes its deep pink color and tart, perfumy flavor to the flower of a common garden plant: hibiscus. Called jamaica (pronounced ha-MY-kuh) in Spanish, the shrub thrives in subtropical climates. Dried hibiscus flowers are often labeled “flor de jamaica” in Latin American markets and in health food stores. The recipe for this faintly sweet drink, which uses dried hibiscus flowers, comes from the Enríquez family in El Paso. 

Featured in “From Jamaica to Senegal, This Crimson Infusion Reigns Supreme.”

The post Agua de Jamaica (Hibiscus Water) appeared first on Saveur.

Ceviche, lomo saltado, causa limeña—Peruvian food is famous for its bold flavors and melting-pot dishes that draw from African, Asian, and European cuisines. But whether you’re holed up in a fishing village on the Pacific coast or dining atop a jagged peak of the Andes, you’ll find culinary through-lines in a handful of pantry mainstays that define Peruvian cuisine: distinctive chiles, pulses, tubers, and more. 

As part of our SAVEUR Cookbook Club series exploring The Latin American Cookbook (Phaidon, 2021), we asked renowned Peruvian chef and author Virgilio Martínez to spill the beans about the ingredients that are always in his larder, and how we can make the most of them in ours at home. 

Heirloom Potatoes

Thousands of years ago, the Incas were growing potatoes in what is now Peru, yet despite being introduced to Europe through the Columbian exchange, the tuber didn’t catch on there until well into the 16th century. Translation? Peruvians have millennia of experience ahead of most of the world when it comes to spud savvy. Martínez is adamant about looking past the standard Russets and Yukons in favor of heirloom varieties that come in a dizzying array of shapes, colors, and sizes. “Most people have never had a real potato,” he says. Great potatoes are a must in his favorite comfort-food potato dish, papas a la huancaína, in which boiled potato slabs are cloaked in a pale yellow chile sauce enriched with queso fresco and evaporated milk.

$15.79 for a 3-lb. bag of baby purple potatoes, Melissa’s

Corn

The backbone of all Latin American cuisines from the Rio Grande to the southern tip of Chile, corn is the ultimate life-sustaining crop. Its husks swaddle tamales in Mexico and beyond, while its silks are steeped to make a medicinal brew. Corn kernels rich in vitamins and antioxidants can be sliced off the cob and cooked, or dried and milled into meal as the base of countless national dishes, from tacos to pozole to pupusas. The cobs can be used as fodder for livestock, which often finds its way back into corn-based dishes. 

Monoculture and industrialization did a number on corn, just as it did on potatoes, which makes tracking down heirloom varieties a worthy challenge. But for the uninitiated, a can of hominy or a bag of maíz trillado (cracked un-nixtamalized corn) are excellent gateways into a world of Latin corn recipes. The latter stars in a creamy cachaça-spiked mash in Brazil called canjiquinha, one of hundreds of mouth-watering corn recipes to choose from in Martínez’s cookbook.

Peruvian Chocolate

In Peru, where cacao trees grow in abundance, chocolate is not just dessert. “We eat chocolate anywhere, anytime,” explains Martínez. “It’s not a special treat for Peruvians but rather an essential foodstuff.” In Latin American kitchens, chocolate is used in ways some American cooks might find surprising: In Nicaragua, for instance, cacao seeds are pulverized with dried corn kernels and blended into a sweet drink called pinolillo, likely a descendant of the astringent chocolate beverage the Aztecs called xocolatl (literally, “bitter water”). In Peru, a potato stew called carapulcra is finished with grated unsweetened chocolate, while in Mexico, chocolate is an essential ingredient in many traditional moles.

Quinoa

The Incas called quinoa the “mother grain,” and farmers have been planting quinoa seeds in the mountain valleys of the Andes for millennia—long enough to develop more than 3,000 varieties of which scant few are commercialized. Containing more protein than any other grain—and all eight amino acids needed to be considered a “complete” protein—it has only recently caught on outside Latin America. Many American cooks are familiar with quinoa’s reddish and sandy-colored varieties, but Martínez says those are the tip of the iceberg: There are also orange, purple, and black quinoas, each with its own texture and flavor.

Ocas

Oxalis tuberosa is the scientific name for this hardy high-mountain tuber that often has a bright fuschia exterior. A dietary staple in ancient Mayan and Incan societies second only to potatoes, ocas are small and knobby with a starchy interior. They can be tart, sweet, or neutral depending on the variety and how they’re prepared. Curiously, because they thrive in mountainous soils, ocas are popular in New Zealand, where they’re called New Zealand yams. Ocas turn nutty and mild when simmered slowly in chupes (stews), in which they’re frequent bedfellows with other Andean tubers like ollucos (Ullucus tuberosus).

Fruits of the Amazon

The Amazon rainforest is the most biodiverse area on earth, with one in every 10 known species of plants and animals found there. Yet surprisingly few Amazonian fruits, vegetables, and herbs are known outside the region. Martínez waxes poetic about the ambrosial properties of passionfruit and açaí as well as lesser-known fruits such as cupuaçu (Theobroma grandiflorum), whose flavor somewhere between pineapple and chocolate makes it a popular base for ice cream and smoothies. You won’t find fresh cupuaçu in the produce aisle, but the frozen pulp is the next best thing.

Chia Seeds

Chia’s sudden trendiness belies the fact that the seed was prized as far back as ancient Aztec and Mayan civilizations. That’s no surprise, considering that it contains a surfeit of healthy Omega-3 fatty acids in addition to protein, calcium, zinc, and fiber—what many aptly call a “superfood” today. A relative of mint, chia seeds are nutty and crunchy when toasted and become viscous like tapioca when blended with liquids. “This tiny seed’s power to turn liquids thick and mucilaginous is amazing,” says Martínez.

Ají Paste

Ají (“chile” in many Spanish dialects) is an essential ingredient in Peruvian stews, sauces, and  ceviches. Ají amarillo (yellow ají) is perhaps the country’s most emblematic single ingredient, lending sweet piquancy and a vivid sunny hue to a wide variety of dishes. “Chuck a spoonful of ají into ceviche, and you’ve got leche de tigre,” shares Martínez, adding that it’s equally delicious stirred into rice or stewed potatoes. Ají rocotó, which is deep red with an earthier flavor than its yellow counterpart, has similar applications; both are easy to track down in jarred paste form (look for ones made in Peru), though Martínez swears by frozen whole ají, which are preservative-free.

Amaranth

Long dismissed as nothing more than a pesky weed in the United States, amaranth is finally getting its due. The plant’s leaves, sweet and high in protein, are delicious in salads, though amaranth seeds are more widely eaten in Latin America, ground into flour for tortillas, boiled whole to make porridge and thick drinks, or toasted and added to breakfast cereals for crunch. In The Latin American Cookbook, Martínez writes that prior to colonization, amaranth was as widespread in the region as corn. “Wherever you use rice or couscous, you can use amaranth,” he says. “It’s especially tasty when cooked like risotto.”

The post 10 Peruvian Pantry Staples That Elevate Everyday Meals appeared first on Saveur.

Among Amazonian communities in northeastern Ecuador, chucula is a staple food. At its most basic it is simply ripe bananas mixed with water, a few spices, and a sweetener such as panela or honey. It’s simple to prepare, just boiled in a pot, and can then be eaten either warm or cold. This recipe, which is adapted from The Latin American Cookbook by Virgilio Martínez (© 2021 Phaidon Press) is a variation from other parts of the country where milk usually replaces the water, yielding a richer consistency akin to a smoothie.

Featured in “Why Virgilio Martínez Wants You to Rethink Latin American Food.”

The post Chucula (Ecuadorian Sweet Plantain Pudding) appeared first on Saveur.

It took Virgilio Martínez and an army of researchers six years to write The Latin American Cookbook, a 400-page hardcover released in November with 600 recipes hailing from 22 countries. It is the newest, and perhaps most hotly anticipated, culinary bible by Phaidon, the publisher behind such emblematic releases as Japan: The Cookbook, India, and The Silver Spoon. 

Last year, when we heard Martínez was crisscrossing the Western Hemisphere gathering recipes and local lore for an epic Latin American cookbook, we were delighted—and admittedly skeptical: How could a single book do justice to the foodways of an area stretching from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn? 

It sounded like mission impossible, even for a go-getter like Martínez. If Martínez’s name sounds familiar, that’s probably because you met him on Netflix’s Chef’s Table. The soft-spoken phenom from Peru starred in a 2017 episode that charted his trajectory from troubled teen to toqued stagiaire to, today, culinary eminence and lay anthropologist. On the show, Martínez gives viewers an intimate look at Peruvian cuisine—the glimmering Pacific seafood, the sticky Amazonian tree saps, the knobby Andean tubers, and everything in between. 

Now, he brings the rigor and curiosity that won us over on Chef’s Table to The Latin American Cookbook, which is our December/January pick for SAVEUR Cookbook Club. The goal of the compendium, as Martínez states in the introduction, was never to be an exhaustive encyclopedia of Latin cooking but rather a “culinary snapshot” with dishes that can be adapted freely to suit personal preferences and available ingredients.  

The recipes run the gamut from international hits like black bean soup and Colombian arepas to lesser-known gems like Chilean disco fries and Bolivian schnitzel dolloped with rocotó-tomato salsa. “Christ’s knees,” we learn, are hot, yeasty buns from the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca bursting with queso fresco and streaked with blood-red achiote oil. There’s even a section on cooking ants, grasshoppers, and palm weevil larvae—ample proof that Martínez is determined to give it to us straight. As he explained to us via video chat, this is, happily, not another Latin-“light” cookbook for the mainstream American market. Here is our interview with Martínez.

You grew up in Lima, Peru’s capital. What foods did you love as a kid? 

Some of my earliest food memories are of ceviche. It was street food, not trendy or elaborate like it can be today. We also ate a lot of stews like carapulcra, which is made with pork and potatoes, and ají de gallina, made with chicken and yellow chiles. To me, Peruvian comfort food smells like onions and chicken stock and melted cheese. These platos de olla (dishes from the pot) were always incredibly flavorful, which I’d later learn was because they incorporated ingredients and techniques from different cultures: African, Portuguese, Spanish, Creole… 

So, some dishes people would call Peruvian are in fact a product of many cultures. 

Yes, and that’s true of Latin American cuisine as a whole. Latin America is a gigantic pantry, filled with different types of corn and potatoes, cacao and coffee. We also have the oceans to play with, with all their bounty. The influence of various cultures over the last 500 years created a fusion cuisine, and to me, the epicenter of that melting pot is Lima. In Lima, food is filling and exploding with flavor. Nothing is watered down. There are no kids’ menus, no plain pasta or potatoes. Fast food arrived late in Peru. For us, fast food was the street vendor ladling out ceviche or soup.

The Latin American Cookbook—that’s an ambitious title! Were you overwhelmed by the task of compiling a book so broad in scope? 

I took the responsibility of writing such a book seriously, but I didn’t overthink it and got right to work. Because of Mater Iniciativa, our research arm, I was already in contact with cooks, farmhands, grandmothers, food writers—people who, in sum, could contribute to making something truly great. I knew what I didn’t want to do was write another book of Latin American comfort food with a few pretty photos and call it a day. We made a point to go deeper. We’d ask people across the region what they ate when they were little, what crops they grew, and what was important to them about each particular dish. And I have to admit, I couldn’t have done this alone. It helped that I had a whole team behind me along the way.  

How would you describe the recipes in the book? 

We started with over 1,000 recipes and winnowed the list down by about half. It’s a book for home cooks. There are simple recipes you can make in 20 minutes. We included many emblematic and traditional dishes and also some newer ones, since the dishes that the current generation loves will likely become classics in the near future. 

What do people most often get wrong about Latin American cuisine?

That it’s all meat and potatoes. The potato part really gets me—you have no idea how many varieties of potatoes there are, and how nutritious they can be. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t just make you fat. They are filled with vitamins and can taste like one corner of the Andes or another depending on their origin. 

What changes are afoot in Latin American cuisine? What does the future hold?  

At fine-dining restaurants in Japan, in the middle of an elaborate tasting menu, they’ll give you, like, a slice of perfectly ripe mango. And that’s the course. In Latin America I think we can learn to give our native ingredients this same reverence and respect. Imagine the same treatment, except instead of a mango it’s a pitaya cactus.

While stitching these diverse food cultures into the patchwork quilt that is this book, did anything strike you as a common thread?

The ingredients may change from region to region, but the sense of community is palpable wherever you go in Latin America. In Guatemala, when families gather for a funeral, they make a point to cook and get tipsy together. One person chops the carrots while the other plucks the chicken for soup… This idea of a family unified around food, paying tribute to their lost brother or sister—it’s priceless and beautiful. I’d even call it innovative: How many families do you know that cook together? What would society look like if we were more collaborative in this way? 

What surprised you the most over the course of your research? 

The willingness of people to help. Every time we reached out to someone for a recipe, some information, or whatever we needed, the answer was always a resounding “¡claro que sí!”  That says a lot about the pride Latinos have in their food. 

Where do you think that pride comes from? 

When something is yours—meaning, you grew up with it, and you know it inside and out—you want to share it with the world. I think it’s a natural human impulse. People everywhere are passionate about their food, but in Latin America it takes on a different dimension because food is so present. And perhaps there’s something to be said for the lack of recognition for producing and exporting some of the world’s favorite foods and recipes. We want to say, look where your chocolate and tacos and coffee are coming from.  

Will there be a sequel to The Latin American Cookbook? 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this journey, it’s how little we know about our own history in Latin America—how certain ingredients arrived here, and how others were sent abroad. It’s nice to realize that there’s still lots to uncover. You know you’ve done a project justice when you can step back at the end and say, “¡Caramba! I’m ready for more!”

The post Why Virgilio Martínez Wants You to Rethink Latin American Food appeared first on Saveur.