We invite you today to share a cooking class. We are in the San Martin region, in the north of Peru. In particular, in a beautiful private conservation are called YACUMAMA. We are 20 minutes west of Rioja and 50 minutes from Moyobamba, capital of the region.
The conservation area of Yacumama
Yakumama lies at 900 meters high, the weather here is mostly hot.
We like to stop at this place. It is very nice, yo can walk around, see animals, birds, friendly people and the view of the lagoon offers opportunities to see owls. All of this in addition to the great stories about giant anaconda (Yacumamam) that are counted in this zone.
This area has existed for over 28 years and was created by Mr. Hugo Vela. The latter remain active to help other communities such as Santa Elena to develop quality tourism products.
A cooking class in Yacumama
Today we have asked the chef of the Yacumama restaurant to teach us how to prepare a typical dish of the region: Tacacho with cecina.
This is a dish made with green cooking banana, a classic in the Amazon (just like potatoes in the mountains) and cecina, which is dried pork meat.
My parents–in-law will be the cooking class students and prepare this regional dish for us. Martina will make the translation Spanish – German. So, let’s start.
First, you have to prepare the green banana. You peel it, cut it, fry it…
Then we put all inside a “batan” of stone on the fire. We adds some pork fat – no, it is not a “light” dish. Helmut crushes everything to make a paste, and then forms banana balls.
It is already time to take care of the portions of meat. In the menu are sausage and cecina. First, they fry the sausage, and then they soften the cecina to fry it as well.
Other customers passing by the restaurant are interested in what we do. One can go through the kitchen and prepare the food with the chef here?
The cooking class ends with the preparation of a little side salad, as always with a lot of onions.
Time for lunch!
Now it is time to enjoy; the view of the lake is relaxing. We have already seen little monkeys hanging in the trees, but not every time.
Here we go, the waitress comes to serve our meal. Be aware that it is a delicious dish, but it is not very light. I guess our diet will start tomorrow.
Thanks to all the Yacumama team for this great moment that we shared with them. We continue our way back to Chachapoyas, Amazonas, in the neighbouring region.
