The Influence Of Food In Latin American Culture

I did foods for my culture project. In some of the countries around the world it is customary to use a phrase something along the lines of “good eating”, or “to your health”. In some of the Central American countries the people say something like “buen provecho” or “mucho gracias”. When a person serves food to another person. Most Spanish speaking counties are Catholic, so the people will say a prayer or blessing over the food before eating. There are dishes that are served during certain holidays of the year. The dishes are based on their countries, or the region they are in. The food that is being served is influenced by the flavor and ingredients of that region, even though all of the countries have some differences in their food. Some

The ingredients that I have going to explain are corn, potatoes, peppers, tropical fruit, queso fresco/ queso blanco, and yuca. Corn has been cultivated in South America for more than 5,000 years, and is South America’s biggest food contribution to the rest of the world. Corn is mostly the key ingredient in most of their dishes. Potatoes is the oldest and most important South American crop. All different kinds of potatoes are still cultivated in the Andes today. In Latin American dishes the potatoes are fries, mashed, freeze dried, baked, and combines with sauces into many dishes. Peppers is a very important seasoning ingredient in South American cooking. There is both sweet and Spicy varieties of peppers. The people in South America use the peppers in different and creative ways, like in the colorful marinades for ceviche. The different kinds of tropical fruit people in South America use are Coconut, cherimoya, mango, guava, pineapple, papaya, lucuma, passion fruit, the list goes on and on. There are so many fruit that South America uses. These fruit show up in many different desserts, but are also in savory dishes and salads. Queso fresco/ queso blanco is a fresh cheese in South American cooking. Queso fresco is a lightly salted, ripened cow’s milk cheese that is added to sauces and crumbled onto salads. Yuca is the starchy edible root of the yuma plant. This is also another very important ingredient the Latin American dishes, Yuca is very popular in Brazil. The root is ground, dried and roasted to make farofa, which is a key ingredient in a famous Brazilian dish feijoada. Feijoada is a pork and black bean stew. Other regions use a sweet variety of yuca that can be mashed or fried, While baking Cassava flour is often used to make Brazilian cheese rolls Pão de