Bolivian Fare

Pique: Bite-sized chunks of beef served with green peppers, tomatoes, locotoes, and onions over a bed of fry-cut potatoes in a beer sauce, all topped with an egg.



Brownies: Well they were supposed to be anyway. Much of Bolivia is at a high altitude and therefore requires some adjustments in baking. Generally a reduction in baking soda or powder, an increase in the liquid paired with the flour, and a decrease in sugar is suggested. For other cooking just remember that water boils are a lower temperature as the altitude increases, meaning an increase in cooking time is required.


So why does water boil at a lower temperature at higher altitude? (sorry can't resist)

Entropically, it's favorable for the liquid molecules to be in the gaseous phase. However at temperatures lower than the boiling point, the energy it would take the individual molecules to break free from the intermolecular forces holding the liquid together would be greater than than the entropic gain from going into the gas phase. Thus the boiling point is when these two factors are equal. Remember that the liquid isn't just up and turning into a gas, there is a required energy input, but that is equal to the entropic gain by switching to a gas at the boiling point.

So at higher altitudes the pressure is lower, thus there is a greater entropic gain than at lower altitudes, thus the equality between the energy and the entropy occurs at a lower temperature.

Anyway if you want to calculate the boiling temperature of a pure liquid you can use this equation. You'll need to know the atmospheric pressure.

Saltena: Simliar to a meat pie, it contains beef or chicken in the middle along with peas, other vegetables, an olive, and a quail egg. It also holds a lot of juice, and to be correct you have to eat it with your fingers without spilling any. I couldn't.

Truncha a la portuguesa - I am not generally not a big fan of fish, but sitting in a little restaurant on the shore of sparkling Lake Titicaca that specializes in trout, it would just be wrong not to get it. The only options in ordering the trout was how they fried it, and mine came with onions and tomatoes, though I'm not completely sure what they fried it in. In any case, it was excellent, and may cause me to reevaluate my opinion of fish.

Traditional bolivian meal in the area surrounding Lake Titicaca: Fried trout, something like sardines, chicken, boiled eggs, corn, potatoes, and beans. I didn't eat they sardines; they were looking at me.

A little bit of miscommunication at an ice cream place. In the top photo my brother tried to order a cappuccino milkshake and instead got a strawberry milkshake(the default flavor) and a cappuccino.

In the bottom photo my father ordered an ice cream coke expecting some akin to an ice cream float. Instead he got just what the name said, ice cream, and a coke.

Llama!: This is probably not a traditional method of preperation, but the fact that it's llama makes up for it. It tasted similar to beef, but kind of gamey.

T-bone steaks: This was one order of steak. One. Other than that, how different how can cooked cow meat be?