• Picarones are a traditional Peruvian dessert that conquers you from the first taste.
The traditional dessert picarones is an important part of Peruvian culinary history and certainly a must eat on the list of tourists visiting this fascinating country. At first glance, a simple donut fried in an oil bath, picarones reveals its unique and captivating aroma from the first tasting.
When the Spanish conquered the New World, they brought with them not only rules, religion, customs and tradition, but also food, trying to impose all these values in the occupied territory.
Obviously, at such a distance from the homeland, it was, if not impossible, extremely difficult to have the necessary ingredients available for a dish like home.
Thus, recipes had to be modified to be able to replace certain ingredients with locally available alternatives. And, because cooking was the responsibility of the African slaves brought by the colonists, or of the subjugated locals, flavors, spices and techniques were combined in a novel way, creating new, typically Peruvian dishes.
This also applies to dessert picarones. Be supposed to picarones it is a reinterpretation of the Spanish dessert bunuelos, small, round donuts fried in hot fat. Other narration says that picarones have their origin in pre-Hispanic times, when the natives prepared a similar recipe based on sweet potatoes and pumpkin, important components of the diet indoors.
The taste of fried dough
It was the cooks of the Spanish colonists, African slaves, who re-adapted the original Spanish recipe by incorporating a sweet potato and pumpkin paste into the dough. The finishing touch in the creation of the savory dish is the wrapping the fried dough in a sweet sauce glaze, "chancaca", obtained from sugar cane and spiced. This syrup can be mixed or even replaced with molasses and honey.
Peru regained its independence from Spain in the XNUMXth century, but fritters reinterpret in picarones they have become an integral part of Afro-Peruvian culture. Families passed down their own recipes picarones from generation to generation, again desert of soul has now become indispensable at festivals and street food stalls. The popularity of the unique donuts even led to the composition of a song, "La picaronera", creation of the Peruvian artist Rosa Mercedes Ayarza!
If you're far from Peru and still want to try the iconic Peruvian dessert, it's not difficult to make and there are plenty of recipe variations online. And once you taste your own picarones, freshly fried, warm and crispy, dipped in the sweet and aromatic syrup, you will know that all the time and effort required to prepare it was well invested.
Photo sources: https://perusim.com/blog/, www.peru.travel
Article written by Gabriela Dan, Editor of Arta Albă
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