Exotic Foods of Latin America
Modern day Latin America consists of distinct regions and cuisines. This is likely due to its development from three separate groups of people; the Indigenous Population, the Spanish Influx, and the African Influx. Each group brought a unique blend of culture and cuisine to the region, creating what is today’s Latin America.
The Indigenous Population is responsible for many of today’s most common foods, including, potatoes, corn, chocolate, tomatoes, peanuts, peppers, and other commodities such as tobacco. The Spanish Conquest had a great impact on the Indigenous population and affected their culture dramatically. The Spanish brought with them the pig, which they integrated into the developing cuisine of the region. As the Africans followed the Spanish into the region, so did their culinary trends. These foods and methods of preparation blended and created what is now known as Latin American Cuisine.
Each country in Latin America has a different blend and interpretation of the areas Cuisine, and no two countries are truly alike when it comes to their cuisine. Bolivia’s primary crops are rice, corn, paintings, sugarcane and yucca. Their national dish is a dehydrated potato called chuno. Argentinean cuisine is heavily influenced by both Spanish and Italian cooking. They are famous for their beef and this is their primary ingredient in the empanada, a common Argentinean dish. As is demonstrated above, each country developed their cuisine based on the available resources and crops in their area.
The merging of different groups of people in different climates and different regions has allowed for a variety of foods and dishes to come out of the Latin American Region. In many ways, these foods may seem familiar to us through our Spanish or Italian understanding of food. But truly, Latin American Foods provide us cuisines that are distinct from any other region in the world. They provide us an opportunity to taste the foods and history of another world of people.
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Great blog. I am an avid cook and I try to have cusines from around the world in my repertoire.
The New World has also played an amazing roll on influencing cuisines elsewhere in the world. The ingredients you mentioned above have spread across the globe.
It is hard to think about Ireland without potatos coming to mind. And where would Italy be without the tomato? And Indian cooking is absolutely dependent on the chilli pepper. Peppers also play a big role in African and some Chinese cooking and many other cusines too.
Of course they borrowed a fair amount from the rest of the world too, You mentioned pork and beef. The role of rice in Latin food can hardly be understated and it probably came from SE Asia. Another important food is beans. I think some legumes (lima beans) are native to South America but a lot of others have their origen in the Middle East and Asia.
My favorite cusines are the results of fusion where the different cooking traditions are shoved together to make a new unique cuisine. I am not familiar with all that you mentioned although I have tried Argentinian food and I love Brazillian cooking. Others around the world that I love are Goan cooking is a fusion of Portugese and Indian, New Orleans food that mixes French, Spanish, African and Native American, and Vietmanese which fuses Asian cooking with French influence.
God, now I am hungry!.
I was wonedering how this one would go over and I am so glad that you enjoyed it so much. I am a cook myself and it is always nice to hear from a fellow foodie. I think one of the most amazing things about food is how it links you to the past. If you think about it a dish as simple as a steak must have taken a tremendous amount of trial and error to produce. Bread exists by a meer fluke at one point in time and when you think about something as sophisticated as cheese it is mind boggling. When I am at work I often think of how incrediable it is that French cusine reached the magnificent hights that it without the benifit of electricty. Food is love.
Practically every woman I have ever seduced and certainly every one of them that I was serious about, the process began in my kitchen. I am not a professional cook but I am pretty talented and the stuff I make is better than what you get in most restaurants. For me it has been a very effective way to start and advance relationships. I'm married now and do about 90% of the cooking. So I agree that food is love.
But food has driven much of human history and not all of it is good. I saw a documentry not long ago where Africans that were still working in slavery in Africa were often working in the salt mines. It is hard to believe that something that we can produce here and sell for pennies for a year's supply is a cause for slavery. Life is cheap in much of the world. Whole army's at earlier points in time were paid in salt. It was very valuable in that it is essential to life and is the most basic of all seasonings for food.
Since this blog is about Latin America it should be pointed out that Columbus who impacted so much history on these continents for better or worse was sailing in search of an alternative route to India. And of course the reason for going to india was the spice trade. It is a matter of perspective whether Columbus's discovery was good or bad but certainly it set in motion a course of history that was definately bad for some and very good for others.