section_path: Culture/Cuisine
section_name: Cuisine
paragraph_text: Cuisine
  
  Peruvian cuisine shows influences from Andean, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Arab, African, and Japanese cooking. Common dishes include anticuchos, ceviche and pachamanca. Because of the variety of climates within Peru, a wide range of plants and animals are available for cooking. Peruvian cuisine has a special ingredient that gives the flavor to the majority of dishes "aji seco". If the same dish is prepared in another part of the world it might look the same, but the raw vegetables, potatoes, ingredients have a different taste in other parts of the world. Examples of these are eggs, quinoa, Lima beans, fish, lime which is more acidic, they taste totally different in other countries. Peru gave to the world potatoes with more than 3000 species, introduced to Europe by the Spaniards in 1532 after the Conquista the Quinoa, both from the highlands.Ancient Peruvians were harvesting potatoes between 8000 and 5000 years according to scientific research.