A recent report from Waitrose tipped South American food to be the next big food trend. But what exactly should we be looking out for?
The Waitrose Food & Drink Report 2014 has highlighted South American cuisine as the next big thing for food lovers. Will 2015 usher in a Latin American food craze?
With the next Olympic Games being held in Brazil during 2016, there’s no doubt that the eyes of the world will turn back to South America, and fans who visited the country during 2014’s football World Cup might still be craving the food they discovered there.
But what are the continent's specialities?
The story of South American food
He says there are many flavours and influences running through the food. The Spanish and Portuguese brought European tastes to Latin America when they colonised the continent, and their nobility settled in the likes of Mexico City, Bogotá and Lima.
Many brought slaves and spices from colonised North African regions with them, and there are Galician and Italian elements to be found influencing Chile, Argentina and Paraguay's cuisine. At high altitudes, chilli peppers were the alternative to seasoning with salt when salt mines weren't near enough.
Esnayder notes that it wasn’t a particularly sophisticated cuisine “because it was food to feed the workers. The aristocracy and the middle-classes were trying to copy what they had done in Europe.” But in the last 20 years or so, there has been a big development as people moved to cities and need less calories to get through the day.
Food plays a central role in Latin American culture, as he explains: “If you invite someone into your house, there is a culture of plenty. You make sure you have plenty of food, there’s music, and social interaction. Food is at the centre of the family, the centre of communities.”
Peru’s Government, he informs me, have been making a concerted effort to make the food of the country a real sign of Peruvian national identity. It seems that this will pay off in the international market, as the country’s cuisine has in particular been marked out by Waitrose for its “bold, simple flavours.”
The journey to the UK
Esnayder ran one of the first South American restaurants in London, Sabor, for almost a decade. When that started, there were only around five other places cooking similar food – and within two years of Sabor opening the others had mostly closed down.
The London restaurant scene overflows with offerings from around the globe, which means strong competition, and Esnayder thinks that the restaurants that closed had followed the strong perception that Latin American food is simply about rice and beans. Those are major components of the food, he concedes, “but it’s not entirely like that.” There are big bold flavours, but many subtleties to work with.
Influences have reached our shores, he thinks, via the expat communities moving here and trying to recreate the food they had at home, but also increasingly from people who've travelled around the continent.
What’s on the menu?
One thing he marks out for attention is ceviche, a raw-fish dish cured with citric acid from lemon or lime juice and seasoned with chilli. This was tipped a couple of years ago, but restaurants don't seem to have made it much beyond London so far.
The only way to get them out of the rainforest and to the European market before they spoil would be air freight. “To get them out of the Amazon and to the main port, Manaus, would take at least four to six days.” That’s a lot of travelling just to try out a new fruit, and associated damage to the rainforest compacts the issue.
Quinoa will continue to grow in strength – Esnayder believes he was the first to cook quinoa in a London restaurant, but now it’s marketed as a superfood and widely known. This has actually had a negative impact on the farmers in South America who actually grow the plant, as they can no longer afford to buy it due to soaring prices.
And to drink?
Meanwhile, the sugar cane spirit cachaça could also take off. “It’s a bit like rum, though clearer.” There are around 500 different types of cachaça, and producers are working on aging techniques to make the drink more sophisticated.
New wines made with unfamiliar grape varieties could come to the fore too. Esnayder gives a few examples of countries and grape varieties: “Chile will have the Carménère grape, Argentina will have the Malbec and the Torrontés… [while] Uruguay will have Tannat, which is a very specific grape, and I think the south of Brazil is about to have a huge increase in its wine exports.”
Organic coffees will also become more popular. Esnayder, who grew up in a coffee-growing region of Colombia, knows all about the subtleties of the plant. “You will start seeing lots of coffees ‘from the origin’, coffee from specific regions, as these give their own notes and hints to the coffee. Organic coffee too. The coffee gets its aromas from the vegetation around it. For example, if you’re in an area that grows lots of jasmine, you’ll see lots of hints of that in the coffee. It’s amazing.”
Separating the coffees for their aromas at source would result in new, refined flavours among products on the UK market.
What won’t work?
Corn products are very popular in South America. Arepas (corncakes) are commonly eaten for breakfast in Colombia. Meanwhile tamales (and their equivalents) are enjoyed throughout the continent. These are corn dough parcels steamed in a banana leaf – this releases the oil in the leaf and gives them a very specific flavour. They are healthy and can be stuffed with pretty much anything.
However, Esnayder doesn’t believe they’ll do well over here. “People eat them when they are travelling and on holiday, but people here don’t tend to like products with corn. I don’t see them taking off.”
What else do you think will be big in 2015? Make your predictions in the Comments below.
Churrasco image credited to Eduardo Gerhardt Martins, dulce de leche image credited to 'audinou', lucuma image credited to 'Akramm', pisco image credited to the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture.
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