With both, you need to find that sweet-tart balance. And though they’re usually served at opposite ends of a meal, in a restaurant kitchen, they often appear at the same time. As the last desserts go out from the pastry station, the rest of the kitchen staff is usually cleaning up and sometimes, after a really long night, popping open a beer or mixing up a cocktail (and if we’re lucky, getting a taste of the pastry chef’s dulces, sweets, maybe leftover cake trimmings or misshapen cookies). It might not be la hora loca, or “the crazy hour,” as we call late night-partying in Lima, but after a long night on your feet, sometimes it’s the only time all of the kitchen staff has to relax together.
It’s a given that in Peru, a coctél bar at home or in a restaurant has to include pisco, and I’ll never turn down a really good sipping pisco or a classic pisco sour (or chilcano, my favorite pisco cocktail). But now that I live in the country where cocktails originated, I really appreciate the creativity of a fresh, unexpected flavor combination in my drinks. (I have all of the great mixologists who have worked at my restaurants to thank for that.)
Sweets are more typically eaten on the go in Peru, bought from pushcart vendors who fry up picarones, sweet potato–squash fritters, or neighborhood kids selling marcianos, what we call ice pops (back in the day, that kid was me). In this chapter, I’ve upgraded many of those classics so they are more sit-down-dessert friendly, but some, like homemade ice pops, are always meant to be eaten straight up.