Recent pork sightings

Just a few kilometers east and northwest of Cusco, each area has a solid block of restaurants that specialize in chicharones that really mean "fried chunks of pork".  Each restaurant will have a glass case in front of their dining room that has sheets of fried pork skin (pork rinds, if you will), pork cracklins and roasted corn kernals. When you sit down, they automatically break off some of the sheet  and grab a handful of the pork cracklins and fried corn and place it in front of you to nibble as you take three seconds to order the fried chunks of pork. 

I found out that the green leaves are not really mint, but they pretty much taste like mint.  I took a chunk of pork home and it tastes just as good cold. 

I found a bacon source in Cusco.  Unfortunately, they only sell it in chunks that weigh about a quarter pound.  What is shown in the frying pan is about two-thirds of the package, after I sliced it. The taste is very smokey, slightly sweet (just sugar-flavored, nothing fancy like maple syrup), and less fatty than most bacon in the US markets. One complaint is that there are some tough bits of fatty gristle in every chunk, but well, it´s bacon and I am gonna eat it anyway.

Pizza

It took a while after the Week of Randy for me to eat pizza again-  I did have pizza six out the the seven days (including twice on the last day). But the big reason was that I knew Peruvian pizza was going to be nothing like any pizza in America (well pizza that I would crave in America, there´s a lotta crappy pizza in America) and I didn´t want to get discouraged early in the trip.  But since I am in Cusco for a long period of time, it´s just inevitable that I would end up at a pizza place. Aside from Peruvian restaurants, pizza/Italian cuisine is probably number two in availability. One encouraging fact is that wood-fired ovens are in most pizza kitchens.

Concern number one - cheese. True, there is no mozzarella di bufala out here.  But there is a solid cheese industry in Peru. Nothing to the degree that there is in, say America or France, but in the markets there are vendors with cheese wheels, cheese blocks, and maybe twenty different types of cheese. The cheese being used for pizzas here is close to mozzarella,  but definitely different. It doesn´t stretch into strings exactly like real mozzarella when the slice leaves the rest of the pie. But overall, I am satisfied with the cheese.

Concern number two - crust. Of course, to expect 00-milled flour was a pipe dream. It´s a problem to find this flour in America. But that can be overlooked. The crust is always a thin-style and there is never a gum-line to worry about (when the crust isn´t baked all the way, you can see a line of dough that hasn´t transformed into a baked crust and is gummy in nature... because it is still raw dough). My problem with the dough is that they do not bake it long enough, so what comes out is a soft bottom pizza with barely-crusty edges. And it doesn´t stay crispy for more than two slices! Rarely will there be any charred edges and never any bubbles on the pie. Overall, better than what school cafeterias and baseball parks make, but probably would never make it in any real pizzeria.  I´ll still eat it.

Concern number three - toppings.  I´ll include the sauce in this section, too. If you´ve had any of my pizzas, then you know that I don´t add much sauce. In fact, it´s just a light layer that covers the dough, but not saturate it. Pizzas here use about the same as me, it´s that their sauces are watered down (or just lack flavor) is not noticable.  The availability of various toppings are actually quite surprising... except for the lack of pepperoni.  (A friend of mine who is teaching English in a school here uncovered the fact that no Cusconians know what pepperoni is.) But they have bacon, spicy sausages, basil, mushrooms, peppers (red is more available... green peppers are hard to find), leeks and ham. There´s even a place with prociutto! Overall - win! Though no pepperoni, there´s enough pizza meats and other toppings to make it unnecessary.

Price-  usually about 20 soles ($8) for a pie that I can eat in one sitting (though the last one or two slices are just to prevent me from taking home pizza),  but the best place that I´ve found so far is charging 27 soles- a friend says that it used to be 17 soles, but they must have jacked it up for the upcoming tourist season.

I would include pictures, but I am always too busy eating pizza.