Only a decade after my invitation to visit Peru for a “gastronomic tour” was considered outlandish, we have hundreds of tourists a week who arrive in Lima to do just that. There are tours to Lima’s many wonderful restaurants, and there are also visitors who spend several days going to the market and cooking their meals under the supervision and guidance of Peruvian Chefs.
Peruvian Cuisine is daily more surprising and evolved. This sophistication increasingly includes the techniques and ingredients of other areas –The Andes, The Amazon, etc.– that were notably absent from Book I.
Just as interesting to me is the fact that of over 20 chefs in this book, only 6 are found in Book I. In fact, quite a few of the new Chefs were in culinary schools or even attending high school when “The Art of Peruvian Cuisine I” came out in March of 2000. Every one of them, though, has “grown up”, as it were, intimately familiar with Book I.
Along with all this, we have the great satisfaction that Book I has given our Foundation. When it hit bookshelves in 2000, we had 140 students in 3 schools. Today, 40 teachers running 12 centers have given remedial help to over 1600 students and 800 of their parents in 2010 alone… a true win-win situation.
In 1998 Tony Custer created ‘Aprendamos Juntos’, a program that installs special classrooms with full time psychologists/therapists who give on the spot remedial help to children with learning disabilities in Lima’s poorest schools. All of the proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the Custer Foundation’s ‘Aprendamos Juntos’ program.
