Welcome Back to La Yapa

After a two year hiatus, La Yapa is back.

A lot has happened since my last post in January of 2023. I’d like to tell you about my mom, pisco cocktails, a Peruvian podcast, and a plant-based cookbook. Welcome back to La Yapa.

My Mom and Tupananchiskama

Six months after I wrote Tupananchiskama, my mom, Sara, passed away. So the Quechua word for “until life makes us meet again” has a deeper meaning now. It’s bittersweet that one of the last dishes we made together was empanadas, and that my family’s empanada making tradition story was published three days after she died.

Though I am profoundly sad, I am also immensely grateful for all she taught me about cooking, the many stories she shared, and all our trips together. Now, I love recreating the comida criolla that Mom cooked for us, and will always cherish memories like the time when Mom cooked with the famed Afro-Peruvian singer Susana Baca.

To honor my mom, I got a tattoo on my arm—TUPANANCHISKAMA—in the font that resembles the hand writing of 17th century Inca chronicler Guaman Poma de Ayala. I see it when I cook, and my kitchen is still a place where we meet again, because my mom is there cooking beside me.

Pisco Cocktails

Since 2020, TASTE and W Journal have published several of my stories about Peru’s food culture. However, I also wanted to write about pisco cocktails for Punch, and over the years I sent them pitches that went unanswered. So I was surprised when Punch reached out to me in 2023 to ask me to write about the Capitán.

Story photography by Lizzie Munro

The Capitán is a classic cocktail dating from Lima’s Belle Époque era that combines pisco and sweet vermouth. Its origin story connects Italian immigrants and cavalry captains in the cold sierra region of Puno. In Lima, Capitán variations are as diverse as the bars that serve them.

My stories about the Chirulín, Emoliente Piteado, and Pisco Punch have taken Punch readers from an Afro-descendant community in Ica’s wine-growing region, to the streets of Lima, to San Francisco’s Gold Rush. And this year, I’ll continue exploring pisco cocktails and their origin stories.

National Pisco Sour Day

The first Saturday in February is National Pisco Sour Day, and making Pisco Sours is a family tradition. In 1940s Lima, my grandfather served it at my mom’s quinceañera by whipping egg whites with sugar in a bowl, then adding pisco and lime juice. And in the 1970s, my father used a tall blender to make a large pitcher for family reunions.

Vegan Pisco Sour, photo by Nico Vera.

To make it vegan, I used a popular plant-based ingredient: aquafaba, the water from unsalted canned chickpeas. Its foaming properties make it an ideal replacement for egg whites.

Vegan Pisco Sour

Serves 2

• ½ cup pisco (quebranta or acholado grape variety)

• ¼ cup fresh lime juice

• ¼ cup simple syrup (1:1 water and sugar)

• ¼ cup aquafaba

• 2 ice cubes (each cube about 1 oz water)

• Angostura bitters or cinnamon powder, for garnish

Combine the pisco, lime juice, simple syrup, aquafaba, and ice cubes in a tall kitchen blender. Blend on high for 30 seconds to crush the ice and make a thick foam. Pour into 2 glasses. Garnish each drink with 3 drops of bitters or with a sprinkle of cinnamon powder like my grandfather did.

Peruvian of USA Podcast

In the summer of 2024, when I was training for trail races in Leadville, CO, I chatted with Nathalie, the host of the Peruvians of USA Podcast, about my journey as a journalist and chef. Our conversation, in Spanglish, is in Episode 117 Exploring Peruvian Vegan Cuisine and Cultural Preservation.

Soy Nico, un journalist and chef from Peru. I write about Peru’s food and drink cultura and I develop vegan-Peruvian recipes. Y me encanta cocinar para mi familia.

We covered several topics, from restaurants, to cookbooks, to the dishes I cook, to my first Pisco Sour, to the benefits of a plant-based diet, to which recipes to try if you are vegan-curious. In an upcoming newsletter, I’ll share more about our dialogue on the future of Peruvian cuisine.

Gracias Nathalie for inviting me to chat about preserving culture through cooking, music, art, literature, and our family’s travels to Peru.

Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking

In late 2024, I celebrated the release of Joe Yonan’s new cookbook Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking and I am thrilled to have developed and contributed some vegan-Peruvian recipes, plus an essay on food, culture, and decolonization.

Cookbook photography by Erin Scott

To learn more about what it took to make this cookbook, listen to Joe Yonan on Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking, Episode 117 of Everything Cookbooks.

I was delighted that Joe said this:

Nico Vera, who’s this fascinating Peruvian cook, who veganizes traditional Peruvian recipes. I just thought he was so charming and talented.

In another podcast, This is TASTE, Joe chatted with TASTE editor Matt Rodbard about the mind-meld required with the contributors in order to develop the recipes.

And Matt had this to say:

Wow, you have a real incredible list of contributors. Brigid Washington, Alicia Kennedy, Ali Slagle, Nico Vera, I’m naming just a few. How did you engage these contributors and what are some examples of what [they] brought to the book?

These are some contributions that I developed over a span of four months:

• Beet Ceviche

• Trumpet Mushroom Tiradito

• Beet & Quinoa Soup

• Wild Rice & Quinoa Bowl

• Ocopa Potato Garden

• Causa Rolls with Beet & Potato

• Panetón Loaf Cake

• Quinoa Oat Milk Pudding

• Tusán Pisco Sour

Thank you Joe for inviting me to share Peru's culinary traditions in this beautiful book. Upcoming newsletters will include the essay I wrote plus a couple of the recipes I developed for Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking.