When I was at University, in Lima, there was this little Chifa restaurant across the street from the faculty. Me and my friends were frequent customers, we visited it at least one time per week when we managed to have some time to be together and share some warm food. This was not only because of the amazing flavor of the Arroz Chaufa but also because that was one of the few dishes we could afford as students. At the open kitchen, which we could easily observe from our usual table, was a Chinese man (or maybe Tusan, we don’t know). with a huge wok pan. We could hear the rhythm of a constant sound, almost like a drum, while he made the rice jump alongside the veggies that were introduced to our country almost two hundred years ago.
Arroz Chaufa is one of the most popular dishes of Peruvian cuisine, even when is not completely Peruvian. It was created by immigrants from China, who came to work in the plantations of the new Republic from 1849 until 1874, during that period, the farming industry was like the Venus of Milo, beautiful but with no arms The Chinese workforce arrived during those years mostly from Macau, to become those arms. Even when the slavery was finished in Europe by the first half of the XIX century, in Peru it didn’t happen until 1854, so when the “coolies” arrived on the Peruvian coast, they were committed to work for their employers, usually “Asendados” (land owners) with severe work contracts they signed before leaving their land. These agreements assured the landowners they would have a workforce on the field for six to eight years, twelve hours a day, with only three free days per year, doing everything their “patrón” demanded, sometimes this would mean working as chefs in their city houses outside of the farmland. In exchange the Asian immigrants received the equivalent of one dollar per week, two pieces of clothing, one blanket, and daily food to cook their meals. It was established in their contracts, 750 grams of rice would be provide per week. This specific detail created a big demand of the cereal that was already introduced by the Spanish colonizers to Peru, but not commonly consumed until the Chinese bigest wave of migration on the second half on XIX century
With the increasing migration not only rice but other popular ingredients for the Cantonese cuisine, got a notorious place on the coast of the South American country. Once their contracts finished, if they earned the trust of their “patrón”, the Chinese were allowed to start little “fondas”, street restaurants, or small ingredient stores on the same land. Those small open restaurants (fondas) offered Chinese dishes adapted to the Peruvian paladar with modest prices, attracting the lower income-class workers to its tables. This is how the fusion between chinese style cooking, and peruvian style of eating started mixed. The chinesse fondas were the predecendant of the Chifa.
Nowadays 35% of Peruvians consume Chifa daily being Arroz Chaufa the rockstar and “kion” (ginger), soy sauce, and spring onions (Cebolla China, in Peruvian Spanish), are commonly found in the kitchens of Lima and the biggest coast cities in Peru. However, what never is missed in the Peruvian contemporary homes are rice. Even though the country has thousands of kinds of potatoes, rice is the largest crop in Peru.
Chinese culture was integrated into the Peruvian one because it was present since the early years of its formation as an independent country. Today, is hard to tell what was Peruvian or Chinese, because of this cultural hybridization. What is true is that those Chinese who arrived on the coasts of Peru, with work conditions that weren’t far from slavery, shared their culture and ingredients with everyone, regardless of their social class or skin color. Maybe it was because of the conditions they were living, alongside the Afro-descendants recently free, or the Andean people working as slaves in the coastal region. People needed the table to share not only what they were eating, but a safe space where they could release their heavy duties and enjoy themselves with others. They needed to work together, creating those fondas that would feed their equals, because of the precarity of their conditions. Maybe that is the origin of the importance that eating together at the table has in the Peruvian culture.
* 300 gramos de pechuga de pollo
* 1 cup of chopped spring onion
* 1 taza de cebolla china picada
* 300 grams of chicken breast
* 4 cups of boiled white rice
* 4 tazas de arroz cocido
* 1 cucharadita de kion picado finamente
* 1 cucharadita de aceite de ajonjolí
* Aceite en cantidad necesaria
* 1 teaspoon of ground ginger
* 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
* Soy Sauce * Sillao * Salt * Sal * Oil
Collected tubers from the Eurasian steppe (potatoes) are boiled in a broth made from the bones of an animal raised in the steppes of central Asia (beef from China). I fry (onions) while my friend grates herbaceous plants of the ‘Amarantovie’ (Amaranthaceae) family (beets). We begin to ‘sobirat’’ (assemble) borscht, although I already knew that I will have to say ‘cooking’ instead. Or rather, no, we begin to assemble one of the variations of borscht, possible with ingredients that we collected earlier. We are assembling borscht under the pretext of an authentic “Russian” dish, although I already know that I will have to start from the very beginning.
Borsch originated in the Finno-Ugric tribes, although at that time it was called azyashid (азъяшид) and had little in common with the borscht that we know now. From the original borscht there was only the root of the word, ⁀borscht⁀1, although at that time the root belonged to the word borschevik (hogweed), because azyashid was prepared from it. Only after many centuries did borscht take on the form we are familiar with, discarding the green of the azyashid and taking on the new beet color of the Amaranthaceae family. But, nevertheless, “borscht” continues to point towards how steadfastly the mighty roots of the borshevik stood against the chaotic nature of the world. So who owns borscht today?
There are more than a hundred types of borscht in the world: Chernigov, Volyn, Stavropol, Kuban, Siberian and Belarusian, as well as Polish, Lithuanian, Czech and Hungarian, and even French. What all species have in common is beets, of the Amaratovi(kh)2. It is this family that determines the dynamic system of [borsch], acting as a strange monarchic attractor capable of uniting people and plants to eat itself through space and time. It may seem that the tubers we have grown claim more to this recipe than we do ourselves, and this will be true. After all, borscht is not just cooked, borscht is assembled.
For the [borsch]
300 g fresh white cabbage
4 medium potatoes salt - to taste
1–2 dried bay leaves greens - to taste
1 clove of garlic (optional) a pinch of ground cloves (optional) a pinch of ground black pepper (optional)
For frying:
2 small beets
1 medium carrot
3 medium onions
4–5 tablespoons of vegetable oil a pinch of citric acid, a little table vinegar or ½ lemon
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
For the broth:
1½–2 liters of water
400–500 g pork or beef on the bone