“Bon appétit,’’ says our gracious host. She fills each drinking glass with a second pisco sour before joining us at the head of the table. Pisco, a brandy made from fermented grapes, is the national drink of Peru. It can be sipped straight up or served as a frothy iced cocktail when blended with sugar syrup, Key lime juice, egg white, ice, and a few drops of Angostura bitters.
Our ship, the Seabourn Sojourn, had docked the afternoon before at Callao, a gritty seaport that is Peru’s largest, where we caught a taxi for the 40-minute ride to Barranco. Founded by Francisco Pizarro in 1537, Callao was first pillaged by pirates, then ravaged by tsunamis, earthquakes, and long-term poverty. The neighborhoods on both sides of the stretch of busy road never recovered. We pass scores of restaurants along the way called chifas, whose menus offer a fusion of Cantonese cooking with Peruvian ingredients.
Peruvian cooking recently was called “the next big thing’’ in gastronomy and we are eager to learn why. Our Web research before the trip led us to Penélope Alzamora of atasteofperu.com for a private, hands-on, half-day culinary experience that fit in with our time on shore. We e-mailed her from home and made reservations to meet.
Born in Lima, Alzamora was sent abroad by her parents during the siege of brutal, home-grown terror in Peru in the 1980s and ’90s (called Shining Path), and studied hospitality at Newbury College in Brookline. She was trained in culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, taught Peruvian cooking at the Tante Marie School of Cookery in San Francisco, and with her family has owned a chain of restaurants in Peru called Bohemia Café y Más, where she worked and partnered with legendary Peruvian chef Gastón Acurio, inarguably the most famous chef in South America.
