Have you ever tried a ceviche de Tarwi before? It is new dish in the Andes made of lupine seeds, specifically what in English are called lupini beans, or in Peruvian Spanish, tarwi. These days it is getting popular in some restaurants, especially because it carries the resonant name ceviche.
Just a few years ago, nobody outside of rural villages wanted to eat tarwi or any other andean product. People from high classes always hated this important product. They said it smells as if you were in the countryside. Their capitalism has always hated Inca culture, food, people.
But time has passed and now peru is a country with important new recognition of the value of our native food and culture. Thanks to his culture, these same people now say we are proud and they say we have products which represent us before the world.
Ceviche de chochos, as tarwi is also called, is well known in Ancash in northern Peru. In this place ceviche of tarwi is popular. It is now spreading and becoming popular in much of the Andes.
In some tourist restaurants in Cuzco, ceviche of tarwi is offered as a first course, an appetizer, for your lunch. It is increasingly include in salad bars. It is more eaten in vegetarian restaurants because they appreciate its rich nutritional value. At home in Cuzco we enjoy tarwi in salads and different dishes even if we do not traditionally make ceviche de tarwi.
The dish is really simple to make and is perfect for lunch time. As many chefs say, we use the same ingredients of a classic ceviche of fish, only in this case we substitute tarwi for the fish and we just add llullucha, a highland, edible bacteria. The resultant dish is bitter and spicy at the same time.
If you want to cook some for yourself maybe for your whole family take at look this easy recipe.
Ceviche de Tarwi
Ingredients
-1/2 kilo of Lupini beans (tarwi)
-2 Sweet potatoes
-A head of Lettuce
-Ají limo
-Lemons
-Llullucha
– Onions
Preparation
First boil the tarwi seeds to take off some the bitterness.* Then add some salt to the the tarwi seeds and sliced onions. Let the tarwi sit in the lemon juice and diced aji limo.
In other pot boil the sweet potatoes.
This dish is served in small portions on lettuce leaves with sweet potato slices on the side.
Finally we have the recipe ready to enjoy.
Peruvian gastronomy grows day by day. It improves everyday as it develops new food trends. The chefs’ true love for what they do inspires their imagination to create new dishes with creative presentation and deep flavor. These give you pleasure.
* In their raw form tarwi seeds are very bitter. They must spend time soaking in many changes of water before they can be used. Howver, in the highland markets of Cuzco you buy the tarwi already pre-soaked and ready to use.
