Latin American gastronomy will have its own Pan-Hispanic dictionary

• Gastronomy is a “powerful language teaching tool”. Photo: Pixabay

The Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (Asale) is promoting the “Pan-Hispanic Gastronomy Dictionary, whose first fruits are expected to be presented at the IX International Congress of the Spanish Language, which will be in March 2023 in Arequipa (Peru).

It will include dishes, products and culinary techniques, he announced. This Monday, the coordinator of the congress, the Peruvian poet Alonso Ruiz Rosas, at the central headquarters of the Cervantes Institute in Madrid, during an act on the richness of the gastronomic language through thepicarerías (food houses) arequipeñas. 

They are indigenous voices like chicha-fermented drink that in the case of Arequipa is made with black corn or güiñapo-, origin first of the chicherías and later of the picadoras, since they were added to the first offer “spicy” (spicy appetizers) to encourage drinking, and then dishes like chupes (a chicken, lamb, beef, or shrimp soup with potatoes and vegetables) and stews.

Chicherías appeared in the 20th century. 16th century, when the cities founded after the Spanish conquest began to flourish and became Picanterías starting in the 19th century.

They are “a culinary institution in Peru. and particularly in Arequipa”, where they are recognized for “spaces of magnificent food and popular tradition, of sociability and democracy”, highlighted Arequipa. Ruiz Rosas.

Always in the hands of women, they have preserved a traditional cookbook prepared “without any electrical device, slowly to the firewood” and with the “artisan blender” What is the batán, a kind of volcanic stone mortar? The spicy Mónica Huerta.

In addition to preserving the culinary tradition, the picadors preserve a wide vocabulary of Quechua, Aymara and, to a lesser extent, other native languages, whose voices are part of the language “lonco” or chacarero from the rural environment.

Words such as “ocopa”, which defines a sauce of chili, onion, huacatay, peanuts, and so on. or nuts; “llatán”, a spicy rocoto sauce; “sarza”, garnish of onion, tomato, hot pepper, vinegar and oil with which to accompany the spicy pig trotters, or “jayar” spicy, are some of the will include; the dictionary. 

According to Carmen Nogero, general secretary of Cervantes,gastronomy is a “powerful tool for teaching the language”, so ; as a “succulent international cover letter”.