A recipe book with traditional preparations of the native peoples launched, within the framework of the Chilean Cuisine Day, the Choose to Live Healthy Program and the Agricultural Development Institute (Indap), through its Healthy Ancestral Food Program. The objective of the initiative is to give greater value to these products and promote their commercialization, which will initially be in the INDAP Peasant Markets and then reach retail.
Quinoa, merkén, pine nuts, oregano, maqui, nalca, murta, mushrooms, honey, herbs and cochayuyo They are some of the healthy ancestral products that are the protagonists of the recipes and represent the great variety of crops that peasant and indigenous farmers, as a family or in a community, today maintain throughout the country.
The presentation of the Original Recipe Book was carried out with a live cooking session led by the chef Francis Fernandez and was attended by the Minister of Agriculture, María Emilia Undurraga; the national director of INDAP, Carlos Recondo, and the executive secretary of Choose to Live Healthy, Daniela Godoy.
The commitment of INDAP and Choose to Live Healthy is that families integrate these preparations into their daily lives, some of them with outstanding innovations, and in the process connect with the territories, culture and stories that many keep in their memory through flavors and aromas.
The national director of INDAP, Carlos Recondoindicated that it is food produced by peasants of the original peoples, “whom the institution supports so that they work with good agricultural practices and can advance to elaborate processed products”, for example with the qualification of process rooms with all health standards. The bet is also, he added, to make them visible «so that Chileans know and enjoy these products, accessing them from the Red de Mercados Campesinos or retail.»
“Oregano is everything; He is my people, my grandmother, my parents and his energy passes through me. Here more than a food there is a culture”, Aymara farmer Adelaida Marca, a user of INDAP’s Indigenous Territorial Development Program (PDTI), commented from Putre, summarizing the value of this plant that she produces with traditional methods, such as cultivation on terraces, and then cleans it for sale in circles. gourmet.
The executive secretary of Choose to Live Healthy, Daniela Godoy, whose service prepared the Original Recipe Book, stressed that these are ancestral products that have enormous benefits for people’s health. She explained that in her preparation “We have worked not only with nutritionists, but also with two important representatives of ancestral cuisine, Francisco Fernández and Macarena Arias”. It is, she said, «nine recipes with main course preparations and also desserts that can be made simply at home.»
Chef Eugenio Melo, from the television program Recomiendo Chile, who on this day provided a series of video-recipes with ancestral foods that can be found on INDAP’s social networks, valued the initiative. “Today consumers, ordinary people, are looking for exactly this line of products and knowing the origin, where it comes from, that they have a more natural origin. For some years we worried more about what oil we put in the car than about the product we put into our bodies, and that is changing today”he pointed.
«Original. Recipes with ancestral products” is the name of the recipe book that in its 24 pages teaches how to prepare the following dishes and desserts: Sauteed pine nuts and merken vegetables, cochayuyo and luche cake, family nalca pebre, split peas milloquin with stewed onion and cilantro, changle, quinoa pebre with cochayuyo, mote with murtas, maqui and mint, and roasted maqui milk with red fruit sauce.
SEE RECIPE: LINK