Potatoes are almost always boiled in Peru, as is the rice. Papas fritas, or french fries, are popular too, but a baked potato is practically unheard of. The sauce is cooked separately in a pot using a variety of ingredients: peppers, chicken, veggies, spices, broth, peanuts, fruits, etc. Almost anything you can think of could be added to the sauce, but peppers, citrus and salt are the most common. Sometimes the meat is grilled separately in a pan but it's also cooked in the sauce itself, often. Organs are typically cooked in the pan or sometimes boiled. The stovetop is almost always where the cooking takes place, with the notably absent method of cooking being in an oven. These are sometimes constructed for special occasions but the occasion is usually more like a BBQ. Contrary to what I believed about food from Latin America, it is often not very spicy, if at all. Much like my own mother's Irish cooking, the food here is primarily seasoned with just salt, but with a much spicier salsa on the side, usually prepared using a mortar and pestle.
While rice is native to Asia and found in cuisine throughout the world, papas are quintessentially Peruvian. They were first domesticated in Peru thousands of years ago, long before the Spaniards or even the Incas were around. In the market in Junín every Tuesday, there must be 100 different vendors selling 100 different kinds of potatoes, in so many different shapes and sizes and colors. Whenever I go out into the campo, (the countryside), I see fields and fields of potatoes, and the people farming them. It's very different from where I grew up in the US.
