Peruvian

Mayocobas, or canary beans, are the quick-cooking pantry ingredient you should know about.

Bright, fresh, colorful, and easy to eat with one hand, this take on the classic Peruvian mussels dish is a great cocktail snack.

Take your time to cook down the flavor base, which is enriched with ají amarillo and beer, and you’ll be rewarded with a thick, homey Peruvian duck stew.

Try eating just one of these picarones, doughnut-like Peruvian confections that are drenched in a fig-flavored syrup.

Next to one of Peru’s most astounding Incan ruins, perched 12,000 feet high in the Andes mountains, is a restaurant called Mil. I planned an entire trip around eating lunch there.

The ceviche at Lil' Deb's Oasis in Hudson, NY, changes on a daily basis in an ever-evolving experiment of colors and flavors. The restaurant uses only locally caught fresh fish, so, in order to re-create at home, buy the highest-quality ingredients you can find.

Lil' Deb's Oasis's take on Peruvian "tiger's milk" features the energizing combo of fresh citrus juice, ginger, and turmeric.

Choose the best-quality fish for this simple ceviche.

"More great expressions of pisco are making their way into the States, with a huge array of flavor profiles, from rustic and edgy, to delicate and floral. La Diablada is cool stuff." —Charles Joly, bartender, The Aviary, Chicago

Haven't you always wanted to make a dish that required Leche De Tigre? Well, in this Peruvian ceviche recipe, you can.

With its signature foamy white head and Angostura bitters garnish, the pisco sour is a stunner.

This cumin and paprika-spiced number gets added punch from a tangy green sauce and an avocado and cucumber salad.

Always use firm-fleshed white fish, without skin and bones, to prepare classic ceviche. Avoid oily or fatty varieties of fish.

This iconic regional dish incorporates soy sauce, evidence of the strong influence of the Japanese and Chinese communities in Peru. The intensely flavored marinade, bright with lime juice and zesty with garlic, deeply seasons the meat, and the grill gives it a beautiful sear. We've provided a range for the portion size, because while some home cooks may be content with a quarter chicken per person, many Peruvian restaurants and takeout places serve each customer a half chicken (even here in the States, where chickens tend to be on the large side).

This Peruvian ceviche offers a plethora of interesting textures: the meaty chew of octopus, the refreshing bite of shrimp, and the marshmallowy smoothness of bay scallops. It's all bathed in the electric yellow glow of a sauce made with Peru's most common chile pepper, the aji amarillo. You can find jarred aji amarillo paste at South American markets. The pepper imparts a distinct fruity quality to this dish, and the addition of turmeric and ginger enhances this fruitiness while toning down the pepper's heat. The variety of seafood in the following preparation, along with its exciting color, is certain to be a favorite on your table.

This recipe epitomizes what a great ceviche should be—crunchy, sweet, savory, tart, and rich all in one bite. Corvina, a type of sea bass, is the most widely used fish in South America for ceviche, and is very forgiving for the novice. Its firm, lean flesh holds up better to acid and is easy to either thinly slice or dice. The combination of sweet potato and raw marinated fish is common in Peru, although there the potato might be roasted whole, sliced, and served fanned at the edge of a plate of ceviche similar to this crunchy, tart version. As you eat the marinated fish, pull away bites of sweet potato from the edge of the dish and enjoy both components at once. Don't be swayed to leave out the sweet potato garnish—you must try both the tart, firm fish and the potato in the same bite to really understand and savor how they work together. Leftover sweet potatoes make a great side dish for spicy foods.

While visiting Lima, Peru, food editor and stylist Paul Grimes, who developed this recipe, ate a dish called "hot ceviche."Inspired by the playful concept, he tried something similar in the test kitchen.

Comfort food, Peruvian style. The chile sauce's brilliant yellow hue comes from a pinch of turmeric, as well as bottled ají amarillo paste, which also lends a fruity heat. It is thickened with bread and walnuts (a tasty trick for stretching foods to feed many mouths) and blended to a satiny smoothness. Although Peruvian cooks usually shred the chicken and add it directly to the sauce, we like the elegance of serving the roast chicken breasts on top of the sauce and passing extra around in a gravy boat.